Alberta Premier Jason Kenney has said his government will not be bringing in vaccine passports. I guess we should be grateful he's not actively preventing businesses from requiring proof of inoculation, like these governors in the US. I think this is a pure political move by Kenney - and a cowardly and irresponsible one at that - as he is likely taking this stance because he's afraid of alienating some of the people who reliably vote for him and his party. But maybe he just doesn't get why vaccine passports are necessary and justified. If so, allow me to help our premier out by explaining this in such a way that even a UCP MLA can understand.
People do have the right not to get the Covid vaccine. You can't be forced to do it against your will; no one is going to grab you on the street, throw you on the ground and jab a needle into your arm. That would violate your rights and I would completely be on your side if it happened to you. So yes, you are free to choose to ignore science and reality and pretend that the vaccine is dangerous, or that it doesn't work, or that it makes you magnetic, or that Bill Gates is using it to force you to keep using Windows. But the rest of us are also free to stop you from endangering us because being unvaccinated makes you a menace to other citizens who - this may shock you - also have rights. You have the freedom to choose, but here in the actual world - not Facebook Fantasyland or wherever you have been spending your time - choices have consequences. When your choices directly impact the health and safety of other people, they have the right to choose not to be around you.
Businesses and other organizations are absolutely allowed to require proof of vaccination, the same as they have all sorts of other policies for customers and employees. For example, let's say I own a restaurant. You don't like wearing pants and prefer to strut around in your underwear. You have that right, to a point. But if you show up at my restaurant without pants, I won't let you in. I have the right to set the terms of service so you have to put pants on. Furthermore, you are not being discriminated against. Discrimination occurs against a group of people who share a characteristic that they have little or no control over - race, handicap, etc. It is based not on logical reasons but only on bias and prejudice. In the past, Asian people weren't allowed in my restaurant because the former owner was a racist jerk. That's real discrimination and we have laws that make it illegal. What anti-vaxxers are experiencing is nothing like that because as you can choose to wear pants, so you can choose to be vaccinated. (If it seems like I'm taking the condescending tone you sometimes use when talking to a child...well, yeah.) People who suffer actual discrimination don't get a choice.
Also, don't bring up privacy concerns. If you're worried that going to a hockey game will out you as an anti-vaxxer when they check you for proof, there is a simple solution: don't go to the hockey game. Don't go to places that require it if you don't want to be turned away at the door in shame. If your friends invite you to a restaurant, make up an excuse, like your cat had puppies or something. People have had to lie to protect their privacy since cavemen started living in groups. You figure it out. Besides, aren't you proud of your anti-vaxxing views? Judging by the social media posts I've seen, you all seem to think you're the smart ones while the rest of us are sheeple. So why do you want to keep your genius status a secret? And just for your information, people already track your activities and violate your privacy through an electronic device that you freely planted on yourself - it's called a smartphone.
If Kenney wants the pandemic to end any time soon, he needs to implement vaccine passports as fast as he can. Many companies have come out and said they will require vaccines for their workers . The Calgary Flames hockey club said it would be mandatory to be fully vaccinated to attend games this year. While these businesses are on the right track, I question whether they will really enforce it, especially considering the myriad documentation people will have. The worst thing you can do is mandate something and then not enforce it; this destroys the credibility of the whole effort and will feed the misperception that Covid really isn't that big a deal and that these companies are merely engaged in virtue signalling. That's why we need governments to create a single digital passport that allows for quick verification.
In the US, insurers are no longer fully covering Covid hospitalization costs, since the overwhelming majority of current patients are the unvaccinated. Our governments here in Canada should follow suit. If you refuse to get vaccinated and are hospitalized with Covid, you get a bill for 100 percent of the cost of your treatment (there are a few people who have legitimate medical reasons not to get the vaccine; obviously, this would not apply to them.) These costs can easily exceed a hundred thousand dollars for someone who had to be intubated for a long period of time. Yes, other people engage in high risk activities, like smokers for instance, that can end up costing the healthcare system a lot of money. But we heavily tax cigarettes to get much of that back. And second hand smoke aside, smokers don't really pose a threat to the population at large.
If all this seems pitiless, too bad. I get that many of the anti-vaxxers have been fed a steady diet of lies from the likes of this talking snot bubble - who without a doubt was fully vaccinated long ago but continually attacks the safety and efficacy of the vaccines - but in the end vaccine resistance comes from a mixture of arrogance and selfishness. The childish entitlement embodied in their attitudes and views can only be cured with harsh medicine. People really only learn one way, the hard way.
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