Vaccination passport - no it does not violate your rights

A few days ago I saw a pool on LinkedIn asking if vaccine passports are a good idea and if other people should be able to know your vaccination status. The discussion played arguments for freedom from government interference and privacy of medical information. Answering that article, I had defended the position of the vaccination passports and the question now morphed into - if you are comfortable with that, would you put that in your LinkedIn profile?

I am not known to jump at a challenge on social media, but in this case, I did. I put my vaccination status in my profile and will keep it there as long as vaccine passports remain a controversy. I believe that your profile is not about your title and that it should speak about your values and if you believe in something you should not shy away from controversy.

While this can be a very long conversation, I will try very shortly to argue why having your vaccination status has absolutely no nefarious effects on your life. If you already know this, you can stop reading, unless you are curious about the points I am trying to make. If you have doubts, please keep reading.

First, let's talk about freedom and liberties, words often used to argue against vaccination and vaccination passports. While you might want to believe otherwise our liberties are not absolute, we can't do whatever we want, there are many conventions we respect every day, and you don't see people picketing against those conventions. I bet that if you get a fine for driving through a red light or without wearing a seat belt you won't find many sympathizers to picket the government to free you from the tyranny of the red light or of the seat belt. And speaking about passports and liberties - you are required to have a passport to cross a border, and that passport and acceptance of entry into a different country are conditioned on that passport and your criminal history. Try to argue that they should not deny you entry because they should not see and know your past - it won't take you very far.

I am sure you got the point by now - freedom is not absolute and where your freedom might infringe somebody else's freedom, your freedom stops. Getting back to our vaccine passports - if your freedom not to vaccinate, obtain and show a passport might make somebody else sick, your freedom to enter that space is nullified. Sure, you can choose not to vaccinate and not get a passport, but that might limit your choices to activities that do not infringe on other's people's right to safety and life.

Second (and final) - sharing your vaccination status does not infringe on the privacy of your medical information. The passport only shows that you have been immunized against a transmissible disease, does not say that you have a transmissible disease. The same way that your vaccination record might have shown to a school board you have been immunized against, say, chickenpox and your admission in school were conditioned on you (well, your parents) being able to prove you have been vaccinated. Why? Because otherwise, you might have been subject to getting chickenpox and pass it around. And no, no school board would agree to accept you without being vaccinated because you are not afraid of chickenpox. If you would argue that vaccinated people should have nothing to fear and accept you with open arms, you are missing the point. It is not about you! If you get an exemption from vaccination, in the spirit of fairness, other people will, too. Only that now you are not the only one not being vaccinated and the moment one of the unvaccinated gets chickenpox, it spreads like fire to the other unvaccinated. So where chickenpox vaccination is a condition of enrollment in school, everybody that attends that school gets vaccinated. If you disagree, nobody will force that vaccination upon you, only that you will be homeschooled.

And having been vaccinated for chickenpox says only that - that you have been vaccinated. It does not say that you have chickenpox, so no medical information has been shared.

In this respect, COVID vaccination and its associated passport are no different. If we want to eradicate this and you want to play with others, you got to get vaccinated and show proof of it. If you're OK standing by yourself, with no interface with other people that want a return to normal life, that's OK too, only that you will have to stay away - for everybody else's sake.

So the choice is yours, nobody forces anything on you. It all depends on what you want to do. Yes, it might create a problem with your employment status, but so did polio and chickenpox vaccination when it was time for school. And you did that because you had to be in school to become a productive member of society. No different now, only you are a few years older.