Vaccine Passports? Bring 'em On!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

After a very long year of sitting at home, I am more than ready to get out and resume my retirement travels.  To that end, I have three important documents at the ready:  my passport, which I had renewed for 10 years in the fall of 2019, about six months before the pandemic began, my COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card which has no identifying information other than my name and date of birth, and my brand-spanking-new driver's license which is also a "real I.D."    The photo on my passport is of an old fart with short silver hair who is clean shaven.  The one on my real I.D. looks more like Gabby Hayes than it does the fellow pictured on my passport.  And the shot card, of course, has no picture at all.

In the event that I wind up having to board a passenger plane this year, I will have all three of those documents on my person.

Yesterday, after receiving my "real I.D." in the mail, I sat down and studied the plastic card.  It resembled by old driver's license but had a couple of other features indicating that it was legitimate and less likely to be copied or forged.  As I looked over the special markings and raised numbers, I thought about how simple it would be to have that identification card contain more information:  an emergency contact, for instance, and important medical information such as blood type, allergies, and a record of inoculations.

Right now the Biden administration is struggling to come up with a plan to verify who have and have not been vaccinated against the coronavirus.  While whipping out a card to prove that you have been vaccinated against the dreaded disease sounds like something anyone would be happy to do, America is saddled with way more than its fair share of conspiracy nuts and people with an irrational fear of their own government - and they see every effort by government to protect them as some "big brother" plot to steal their information, track their movements, and generally control their lives.

This whole notion of a machine-readable shot card is drawing fire from the paranoid element in American society.  Conservative figures like congressmen Jim Jordan of Ohio and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia have condemned the plan as government overreach, and Florida's irrational governor, Ron DeSantis, is vowing to quash the notion of vaccine passports through an executive order.  It almost feels like some of these people are rooting for the success of the pandemic over the health of the nation.

I'm not scared of my government - at least not any more - and I would like to have some way to better insure that I rub elbows with as few vaccine-deniers and COVID-deniers as possible.   If they are proud of their ignorance, let them proudly display that ignorance on mandatory government I.D.s  before they are allowed to mix with people who have a higher regard for their own health and safety.

Vaccination passports are a move in the right direction.  Bring 'em on!