It’s just institutionalized discrimination, anyway.
COVID vaccine passports have major flaws and Ontario’s government has better options available. That’s why think tank Cardus has sent Premier Ford an open letter , calling for him to immediately replace vaccine passports with effective, evidence-based policy.
“When you declared in mid-July that you would not tolerate the ‘split society’ of vaccine passports, Ontario was coping relatively well with the pandemic,” we write in our open letter. “Daily cases and test positivity were low, as were hospitalization, including ICU occupancy. What emergency has arisen since that time to necessitate action as drastic as your proof-of-vaccination plan?”
Due to the fact we’d already reached social immunity- au naturel
COVID cases in Ontario have not reached 1,000, while fourth-wave ICU occupancy is only at 17%of the third-wave peak.
Meanwhile, there are several problems with vaccine passports.
They disproportionately affect certain groups, especially Black and low-income communities where vaccination rates are lowest. These fellow citizens are the most likely to end up barred from restaurants, events or other places – unless, of course, they’re staff and don’t need to show proof-of-vaccination to work. But that has a perverse effect.
“Proof-of-vaccination requirements mean that restaurants, indoor recreation facilities, cultural venues, and many other locations will be available to the vast majority of white or affluent Ontarians, while racialized people, the poor, and recent immigrants will be disproportionately excluded — other than to cook, serve and clean,” our letter notes.
Is this not deeply discriminatory?
The vaxx passport also discriminates against those who choose to not take a very sketchy jab- Those who are skeptical for very good reasons. Many of them white.
Vaccine passports also erode public trust. Vaccines are highly protective, so why must we keep the unvaccinated away from the vaccinated?
I’ve asked that question oh so many times…
If allowing the unvaccinated to dine in a restaurant or attend a concert is risky, how can it be safe for them to serve customers in these same establishments? If the policy will be in place temporarily, where is the exit plan, and why is the government investing in a permanent digital application?
Ontario’s government has offered no answers, undermining trust in political leaders and, worse yet, possibly in vaccines.
Passports create privacy problems too. They’ll necessarily need data to operate, and once data exists it can be exposed or misused. How secure will that data be? Quebec’s passport system was hacked and a private vaccine-passport app exposed the personal information of hundreds of thousands of users.
What’s more, Ontario’s COVID Science Advisory Table admits there’s no direct evidence vaccine passports affect viral transmission . They also don’t seem to help vaccination rates. Ontario went from an average of almost 42,000 daily vaccine doses in August to less than 33,000 daily after the passport announcement.
I’ve talked about the solution below previously
The province should double down on using rapid COVID tests, which help to establish whether someone is infection-free and can reduce overall transmission.
Remember this previous post?
3 replies on “Ontario, Toss the Vaxx Pass”
Just a note that I simply took your address and added to my RSS reader and it picked up the feed. However, to make it easier for your readership, you may want to add the RSS button somewhere on the page.
Glad I was able to sub.
Hey BMan
thanks for the tip!
I gotta figure out how to do that.
and glad you picked up the feed 🙂
and I haven’t yet figured out how to do this RSS feed. Might take me longer then hoped for.