WHY WE SHOULDN’T FEAR VACCINE PASSPORTS.

Some paranoid conspiracy theorists, if possible, need a reality check. Jews being forced to wear a yellow Star Of David and homosexuals a pink triangle and survivors of death camps showing numbers tattooed onto their forearms were so as to readily identify people the Nazis wanted to discriminate against, and the tattoos were all about removing human identity of these people. Vaccine passports are no such thing.

For starters, you don’t have your vaccine status tattooed onto you, and nor do you wear a badge on your clothes proclaiming it to the world. You carry a small card in your wallet and it’s not connected to a database whereby an employee of a venue can look it up online. All they need to do is ask for a form of identification and say, “Okay, I know that’s you and I know you’re the same person as the one on the certificate, so not problem.”

I don’t have a My Health Record, because I don’t trust anyone except my GP (my parents’ former GP broke confidentiality when I was 16), and there’s no need to reveal any private information to anyone.

They also talk of segregation, and let’s be honest about something here. Until smoking in public places, including shopping centres, and the like became outlawed, you could go into a restaurant and ask for a smoking or non-smoking table (I remember having to sit in a smoking section so my father’s work colleague’s husband could smoke (one smoker out of seven people)) but that was for the comfort of other diners. And let’s also face reality, the segregation that people called for an end to were on matters over which you had no control, such as race or ethnicity. You can control whether or not you are vaccinated.

Interestingly, many of the people who oppose vaccines are not up in arms about schools and child care centres having a no vaccine, no play policy. And the effect is the same. A child who goes to a child care centre who is not vaccinated could place an immunocompromised child in jeopardy.

I do believe that a person should have the choice as to whether or not they are vaccinated by their doctor, pharmacist or a vaccine hub, but that’s what should be expected. And I do believe that the choice of vaccine should be made with the input of the doctor, not a mandatory thing.

These people also say, “Oh, think for yourself,” and most of us can, which is why we dismiss out of hand the rot that it is discrimination, segregation or whatever else they may devise. In reality, that is just an excuse not to be vaccinated.