It looks like those — including our own governor — who believe that ‘public health trumps everything’ are increasingly looking to segregate the population, not unlike the apartheid regime in South Africa.
In France, for example, people who aren’t willing to submit to vaccination can’t enter any leisure or cultural venue with a capacity of more than 50 people, including museums, galleries, theaters, cinemas, concert halls, exhibition spaces, nightclubs, discos, zoos, open-air festivals, sporting venues, theme parks, libraries, swimming pools, tourist attractions, or large shopping malls; enter any restaurant, café, or bar (both indoors and outdoors); travel on long-distance trains and coaches, or on domestic flights; live in or visit a nursing home; or go to the hospital.
Now, some would protest that this is not the same as apartheid at all, since you can change your vaccination status, but you can’t change your ethnicity. Which is true, but ultimately beside the point.
Suppose it were possible for people to change their ethnicities in order to be allowed to participate more fully in society: Look, we’ll just change your external appearance, and then you’re good to go. Deal?
Some people would take that deal, but a lot would not, because their ethnicity is a core part of their understanding of who they are.
The same is true of your most deeply held principles — including the kinds of principles that are keeping the ‘vaccine hesitant’ from just going along with the program. They are a core part of your understanding of who you are, and even if you could easily change them — which you can’t — you wouldn’t.
This is all complicated, of course, by the fact that ‘vaccinated’ is a moving goalpost. First, because there may be an unlimited number of ‘boosters’ that you’ll have to keep taking to maintain your status.
(If you have one of four required shots, are you ‘1/4 vaccinated’, in the same way that someone with a single Jewish grandparent is ‘1/4 Jewish’? Or in the same way that Elizabeth Warren is ‘1/1024 Native American’?)
And second, because there’s no reason to believe that, in the long run, COVID-19 is the only thing you’d have to be vaccinated against.
(Eventually, such passports could be used to certify, not just that you’re not carrying around certain viruses, but also that you’re not carrying around certain ideas.)
I wonder whether, instead of fighting this, it’s something that the unvaccinated should be welcoming… as long as a few changes are made.
Right now, we talk about ‘the market’ (which is an ideal that we never really approach), and alternatives to that: black markets, gray markets, and so on. What if we divide things up into the vax market and the unvax market?
Vaccinated people could keep unvaccinated people out of their establishments, deny unvaccinated people their services, and so on. Just like with white-only establishments in South Africa, or in South Carolina.
But in return, unvaccinated people would be free to welcome other unvaccinated people into their establishments, offer unvaccinated people their services, and so on — without having to jump through regulatory hoops that pretend to protect ‘public health’. Or, for that matter, any regulatory hoops of any kind, like occupational licensing laws, prescription drug laws, and so on.
Unvaccinated doctors could treat unvaccinated patients, and dose them with horse dewormer, or whatever Joe Rogan is recommending this week. Unvaccinated restaurants could serve dishes made with raw milk from unvaccinated family dairies, or meat slaughtered at unvaccinated family farms. Unvaccinated churches could hold services for large numbers in small spaces. Unvaccinated Uber drivers and Airbnb hosts could offer their vehicles and quarters to unvaccinated guests without having to constantly withdraw to wipe everything down with bleach. And so on.
Since we’re going to kill each other anyway, why try to protect us from ourselves? We clearly want to die, so why not let us? We’ll fix the problem for you, and all you have to do is sit back and wait. And stop censoring us! The more misinformation we spread among ourselves, the more quickly we’ll be out of your hair. Which is what you want, right?
In other words: We’ll keep our breath off of you, and you keep your laws off of us. Deal?
