“Texas is open 100%. Texans should have the freedom to go where they want without any limits, restrictions, or requirements. Today, I signed a law that prohibits any TX business or gov’t entity from requiring vaccine passports or any vaccine information,” tweeted Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas. He made the announcement on Monday and the news went viral across social media platforms and independent media outlets. It hasn’t really received any substantial coverage from mainstream media, in fact, debating or calling into question the idea of “vaccine passports” has not really been a welcomed conversation despite the fact many health experts have been condemning the idea since they were first introduced.
Texas will be the seventh state to sign such a measure into law. Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, and North Dakota have also banned businesses and government entities from requiring proof of vaccination, while Utah and Arkansas have barred governments from requiring proof of vaccination.
As far as the United States as a whole, the Biden administration has said on multiple occasions that a national vaccine passport won’t happen. Instead the U.S. is working on a system that will allow Americans who travel internationally to show proof that they have been vaccinated. This will be required given the fact that multiple countries around the world will most likely require it, like several European Union nations, and Canada, for example.
Why ban vaccine passports? Well, there are multiple reasons, and I’ve covered these reasons in depth before. In an article I published in April titled “The top four reasons why some people, doctors & scientists refuse to take the COVID vaccine,” many of the points outlined there are why freedom of choice and informed consent when it comes to the COVID vaccine are paramount.
The fact that many of these points, as well as the doctors, scientists, and peer-reviewed papers that have and are raising concerns about the COVID vaccine are being completely censored, and in some cases ridiculed and called a “conspiracy theory” is also very unsettling and suspicious. You would think in a time of a global pandemic, all concerns that are being raised would be open to discussion, transparency and a healthy debate.
Critical criminology repeatedly has drawn attention to the state-corporate nexus as a site of corruption and other forms of criminality, a scenario exacerbated by the intensification of neoliberalism in areas such as health. The state-pharmaceutical relationship, which increasingly influences health policy, is no exception. That is especially so when pharmaceutical products such as vaccines, a burgeoning sector of the industry, are mandated in direct violation of the principle of informed consent. Such policies have provoked suspicion and dissent as critics question the integrity of the state-pharma alliance and its impact on vaccine safety. However, rather than encouraging open debate, draconian modes of governance have been implemented to repress and silence any form of criticism, thereby protecting the activities of the state and pharmaceutical industry from independent scrutiny. – Paddy Rawlinson, Law Professor, Western Sydney University. (source)
Is the push for vaccinating the entire population actually justified and scientifically sound? If it’s not, then why is there such a hard push for it? Is it really about our health or are there other agendas and conflicts of interests at play here? Why can’t freedom of choice remain for people who want to travel, attend sporting events and more? Do mandatory vaccine measures separate and divide society even more? Should people who want to take the shot and those who do not want to take the shot all unite as one to push for the freedom of choice? If a large portion of the citizenry can be made to believe that vaccine passports are just, what else would they agree with? Would they agree with the idea that unvaccinated people cannot work, that it is just to take away their ability to feed themselves and keep a roof over their head? Would they agree with the idea that the unvaccinated should simply be exterminated?
Should humanity give governments the power and authority to implement these measures against the will of so many people? Do governments really have the best interests of the citizenry at heart, or is the political system now incapable at providing useful and meaningful solutions to the problems humanity faces? Is it time to look elsewhere for solutions instead of constantly relying on our political system for significant change?
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