Even as the nation begins to round the corner on the coronavirus pandemic, Joe Biden and his Democratic buddies don’t want what’s left of the crisis to go to waste. Enter his “vaccine passports.”
Biden’s White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki says any vaccine passports will be outsourced to Big Tech, but Acting Medicare and Medicaid Services chief, Andy Slavitt, says, “This is going to hit all parts of society, and so naturally, the government is involved.”
Outsourcing Vaccine Passport to Big Tech
The passport sounds like the continuation of ObamaCare, but hitting “all parts of society” to achieve compliance. As I reported in PJ Media, the current goal is to have everyone get a COVID shot, but one could imagine the “existential threat” of global warming or any other scheme Democrats come up with to curb your use of energy or affect the kind of car you drive, for example. If you’re lugging around too many pounds, one could imagine giving brownie points for eating well, which conversely means you’d get docked for eating French fries.
New York Magazine reports the passport would be wide in scope.
[P]roof of vaccination “may be a critical driver for restoring baseline population health and promoting safe return to social, commercial, and leisure activities.” There is also some focus-group evidence that vaccine passports could help convince Americans who do not want to get inoculated to sign up for a shot. [emphasis added]
As I wrote at PJ Media, liberal author and feminist Naomi Wolf notes that the government and its buddies in Big Tech could put anything on the existing platform in the future and it would be the “end of human liberty in the West.” Not to mention destroying constitutional protections and breaking several laws.
A government interagency committee has been convened to consider how Big Tech might implement vaccine passports to determine if you may travel or go to large events.
Somewhere left behind is the question of constitutionality or ethics.
How It Works
The worldwide pandemic vaccine passport being proposed appear to be a lighter version (for the moment) of China’s social credit score scheme. This divides people into camps, the trustworthy and the untrustworthy. “Trustworthy” people who hew to government diktat would get more points. This is a scheme we feel sure the Left is going to love. You can guess which group you’d be in.
China’s rulers in the Communist Party began pre-announcing its social credit score in 2014. It was rolled out soon thereafter and was to have been country-wide by 2020.
Vox reports that the government’s goal in setting up the system was to “help ensure a model society in which “sincerity and trustworthiness become conscious norms of action among all the people.”
The Chinese social credit scheme is a series of databases keeping track of each person to “provide a holistic assessment of an individual or a company’s trustworthiness, based on a numerical score.”
Drew Donnelly, Ph.D., writes about the scoring system and finds “the social credit system has some similarities with the credit ratings provided for individuals and corporations in other countries, but captures information on a wider variety of behaviors.” [Emphasis added]
It’s believed that in addition to a database, the Chinese government would likely use, if it isn’t already, facial recognition technology from the ubiquitous surveillance cameras – an estimated 200-million of them.
The Point System
The way it works is that each person in China starts with 1000 points.
Every time someone does something the government doesn’t like they’re docked points. If you don’t visit your aging parents, for example, your score suffers. “Illegally” protesting, writing things the government doesn’t like on social media, “spreading rumors” on social media, being part of a “cult” – a religious system not endorsed by government, such as Falun Gong, will make you a near-outcast. If you offer up “insincere apologies” for all manner of offenses, from drunk driving to jaywalking (including the above offenses), it will cost you points.
Considering that Big Tech is being asked to take point on this vaccine passport and what comes afterward, and its propensity to censor conservatives, you can imagine how this will work out for you. Big Tech is already hoovering up all your personal information and political proclivities right now.
Good behavior includes not doing any of the things just outlined, praising the government on social media, donating blood, doing charity work, having good credit, and performing acts of heroism. The highest social credit score is 1300 points.
If one gets any score below 600, they’re graded “D” and are deemed an untrustworthy person, according to Vox.
Named and Shamed on ‘Blacklists’
Business Insider reports that there are several ways that the man can stick it to the little guy with a low social credit score such as preventing you from being able to buy tickets to travel or stay in hotels; throttling your internet speed; banning you and your kids from good schools; or preventing you from getting good jobs, for openers.
If they don’t like you they can even take your dog.
Untrustworthy people are publicly shamed on several blacklists. Donnelly reports that by 2019 some “23 million people [had] been blacklisted from travelling by plane or train due to low social credit scores as issued by China’s National Public Credit Information Center. It is reasonable to assume that this will continue as part of China’s social credit system.”
Fortune reports that China has turned itself into what sounds like a dystopian Hotel California.
China’s National Public Credit Information Center on Friday released a report that said it stopped 17.5 million people from buying airplane tickets and 5.5 million from hopping on a train in 2018 because they had low “social credit” scores. Another 290,000 people were stopped from getting a high-paying senior management job and 128 people couldn’t leave the country because they hadn’t yet paid taxes, according to the Associated Press, which obtained a copy of the report. [emphasis added]
Joe and His Cadres Would Be Exempted
The president and vice president would not be issued vaccine passports. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki says that President Biden wouldn’t be issued a vaccine passport since he flies on private jets.
Well, I would say the president travels, as does the vice president, on a private plane. That is the purview of every president and vice president throughout American history. That is, of course, different than traveling on a commercial flight and going to mass events. As you know, we don’t — the president is not hosting rallies, nor is the vice president. We take the role of sending — being models quite seriously. But I think most Americans would recognize the difference.
As in China, the ruling cadres are not subject to the same rules as the “workers.”
Add to this scenario the changes in the election system Democrats are trying to cram through and the latest iteration of the Green New Deal and we’re afraid there’s not much room for God-given individual rights under the U.S. Constitution.
We have a collective to run, individuals to shame, and conservatives to re-educate, after all.
Goodbye, America.
Victoria Taft is the host of “The Adult in the Room Podcast With Victoria Taft” where you can hear her series on “Antifa Versus Mike Strickland.” Find it here. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Parler, MeWe, Minds @VictoriaTaft
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