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Saturday, February 26, 2022

Links - 26th February 2022 (1 - Covid-19: Mandates/Passports)

The Juggernaut on Twitter - "Quebec announces that the unvaxed are not allowed inside of large stores unless accompanied by a Health Warden that will monitor them so they do not purchase anything except for food and medicine."

CBC condemns comparisons of COVID restrictions to Nazi Germany after calling Trump 'Hitler' for four years | The Post Millennial

Facebook - "The government has increased vaccinated differentiated measures to encourage unvaccinated people to stay home for their protection. I think it is a good thing that the government is taking steps to protect the vulnerable. Given that almost all the deaths from COVID daily are from people with "underlying conditions", I propose that such measures also apply to anyone with an "underlying condition" so that they are equally protected."
Colin Powell should have been under house arrest. Maybe that would have protected him.
If covid apartheid is really to protect the people affected by it, there should be no medical exemptions

About 52,000 employees in Singapore remain unvaccinated against COVID-19: MOM - "authorities announced that unvaccinated workers will not be allowed to return to workplaces from Jan 15...   Unvaccinated or partially vaccinated employees will not be allowed to return even with a negative COVID-19 test result...   "Unvaccinated employees, especially those who are older, will put immense strain on our healthcare capacity in the coming months, if they contract COVID-19," said MOM.   Vaccination also will be a condition for the approval or grant of new long-term passes, work passes, as well as permanent residence from Feb 1 next year.   In an update on Wednesday, MOM clarified that the measures will apply to both employees and those who are self-employed. MOM said that employers should redeploy unvaccinated workers to jobs which can be done from home, with suitable remuneration. They can also place them on no-pay leave "based on mutually agreeable terms".  As a "last resort" after exploring these options, companies can fire these workers with notice, "in accordance with the employment contract""
Someone who denied that covid apartheid was a thing cheered this. At least under apartheid one did not get fired. So this is even worse
After a 100% vaccination rate has been achieved, the new scapegoats will be those who haven't gotten their boosters

Meme - "IMAGINE IF YOU WILL... A PANDEMIC SO SEVERE THAT WE CAN AFFORD TO FIRE HEALTHCARE WORKERS"

After Firing Hundreds over Vaccine Mandates, California Has to Use COVID-Positive Hospital Staff - "Allowing infected health workers to continue their duties is needed “due to the critical staffing shortages currently being experienced across the health care continuum”...   The state is so short-staffed that Gov. Newsom called out the National Guard last week to assist with coronavirus testing."
Weird. We were told covid apartheid was necessary to prevent the healthcare system from collapsing

CDC shortens isolation time for asymptomatic COVID-19 to five days - "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is cutting its recommended isolation time for people infected with COVID-19 from 10 to five days, as long as they are asymptomatic."
So much for covid apartheid being to protect people from the unvaccinated

Chris Selley: Canadians are enjoying firing the unvaccinated far too much - "One thing on which we should probably all be able to agree: These people are sincere in their objections. You don’t choose unemployment out of an antisocial fit of pique — especially if you’re a low-paid immigrant who doesn’t have a lot of other marketable skills, which is very possibly the reality in some of these casesIn the early days of the vaccination drive, Canadian government officials and media outlets were very careful never to blame the hesitant. There were cultural considerations that meant certain communities needed to be cajoled and reassured, we were told, and if our cajoling and reassurances weren’t working, well, that was our fault for not understanding, and we needed to try harder. Nowadays many commentators are perfectly happy to vent spleen on those same people... in 2016, 36 per cent of Canada’s nurse aides, orderlies and patient service associates were immigrants, and of those 30 per cent each were Black and Filipino. We know demographics are similar in the long-term care industry. Vaccine resistance is a huge problem in the Philippines, thanks in large part to a bungled rollout of the world’s first-ever Dengue fever vaccine in 2016. (It is a grimly fascinating tale, offering many potential warnings that went unheeded during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.) There has been much reporting about hesitancy in Canada’s Black community as well, usually citing an understandable mistrust of authorities. Earlier this year, Statistics Canada found just 56 per cent of Black Canadians were “very or somewhat willing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine,” as opposed to 77 per cent overall... Perhaps governments that told us masks don’t work and foisted byzantine, clearly political and often downright asinine rules on us for the better part of two years should not be surprised to find that some of us just aren’t willing to listen anymore. It can’t be pointed out enough how recently Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was musing that it would be inequitable to bar the unvaccinated even from a Toronto Raptors game, never mind from gainful employment in their field. It can’t be pointed out enough that the reason mandatory vaccination became Liberal policy was because strategists saw it as a valuable wedge issue in an election that Trudeau was insistent on having... There is much concern among Canadian elites over the radicalization of the individualist Canadian right. That’s not generally who’s getting fired from hospitals and LTC homes, but it’s who’s marching in the streets, protesting outside of hospitals and chucking handfuls of gravel at the prime minister. It’s difficult to think of a more efficient way to cultivate that discontent and turn it into rage than by firing thousands of people because their personal medical decisions are unpopular, and not even offering them a few hundred bucks a week to help them get back on their feet."

Stop Calling It a ‘Pandemic of the Unvaccinated’ - The Atlantic - "“If you get into these scenarios where you start pitting one group against another, you create tension, you create resistance,” says Simon Bacon, a behavioral scientist at Concordia University, in Montreal. “What you really need to do is totally deflate that.”... “If you’re worried about safety and efficacy, a vaccine passport or lottery doesn’t affect that,” Bacon told me. This was one concern raised about Israel’s “green pass” vaccine passport, which, after it was rolled out in February, had at best a minimal impact on vaccine uptake... Some early evidence (not yet peer-reviewed) suggests that vaccine requirements can be counterproductive because they make people feel pressured and may increase existing distrust of public-health initiatives, especially among marginalized groups. The American Public Health Association’s executive director, Georges C. Benjamin, has warned that Biden’s latest mandate might cause Americans to “dig in and bristle at being told what to do.” An overarching principle of public health, said Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, is that people should engage with policies willingly, not because they fear being penalized. A recent study of attitudes toward vaccine passports in the United Kingdom and Israel showed that lower willingness to get a shot is associated with feeling that one’s autonomy is being compromised. For some, said the study’s lead author, Talya Porat of Imperial College London, “passports might increase resistance to vaccination or alter the motivation behind their vaccine decisions in ways that might have detrimental long-term consequences.” Even though people might get vaccinated now, they may resist booster shots or vaccines against new coronavirus variants in the future... Calling this a “pandemic of the unvaccinated” stigmatizes the people we need to engage with most... Often, the people who are vaccine hesitant are our own family, friends, and colleagues. That’s worth remembering, because it reminds us who is at risk if we alienate the unvaccinated. If there’s any chance of persuading them to get a shot—and ample evidence shows that doing so is possible—it’s not going to happen if we only enforce policies that exclude them, foster resentment, and make them feel like their fears and concerns are being dismissed. Compassion, not coercion, is what’s going to get us through this pandemic together."
Of course, lots of vaxholes delight in demonising and cutting off their friends and family, so

RIP, 'Pandemic of the Unvaccinated' - ""This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. The unvaccinated. Not the vaccinated, the unvaccinated," Biden emphasized, on the same day that the omicron variant produced a one-day positive-case increase of 16 percent in highly vaccinated New York City... New York City's one-shot vaccination rate (of 92 percent for adults, 83 percent for kids between 13 and 17) "rivals any number in the free world," Politico's Jack Shafer observed last week, and yet somehow my vaccinated teen and boosted self spent Christmas under quarantine. The fact-checkers over at The Poynter Institute's PolitiFact generously rated Biden's "vaccinated…do not spread the disease" claim as only "mostly" false, despite epidemiologist quotes like "[the] statement is not accurate," and "vaccinated individuals can definitely infect other people."... how have mandates worked in practice? The New York Times on December 18 published a survey of all 50 states and the country's largest 100 cities, and concluded that the government orders "have not provided the significant boost to state and local vaccination rates that some experts had hoped for." To the contrary: "In most locations, the number of adults with at least one shot grew at a slower pace after states and cities announced mandates than it did nationwide in the same time periods."   "Mandates might help for people who are just finding it inconvenient, but have no really legitimate reason to not get the vaccine," Lisa Cooper, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Equity, told the Times. "But then you have people who have strong beliefs against it or who really have significant other struggles, and the mandates are not going to do anything for those people."... Rebranding COVID-19 as the "pandemic of the unvaccinated," then targeting that population with punishments for noncompliance, has been a way to scapegoat political opponents and technology companies, while bolstering the sense of virtuousness among the vaxxed. Those dynamics were present at the creation of the re-brand. The same week that the White House COVID-19 Response Team began telling vaccinated people that the pandemic was now for those other people, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for a "whole-of-society" effort to combat "health misinformation," then Biden just flat-out accused Facebook and other social media companies of "killing people."  Then in the same week that Biden announced his vaccine mandate, he also charged prominent GOP officials with being "cavalier" about whether children lived or died. "Republican governors in states like Texas and Florida are doing everything they can to undermine the public health requirements that keep people safe," the president tweeted. "They're playing politics with the lives of their citizens, especially children. I refuse to give in to it."  Biden's entire speech unveiling his vaccine mandate was dripping with irritation for Americans who had yet to get a shot, and for politicians who were not sufficiently on board with his COVID policies...   The message given here to the vaccinated is mixed bordering on schizophrenic. This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated does not jibe with vaccinated workers need protection from unvaccinated workers. In a speech touting the urgent need for vaccination, Biden is saying that getting vaccinated cannot be a ticket back to normal life until we deal with those foolish anti-vaxxers. Rather than encourage the kind of social cohesion that correlates best with high inoculation rates, the president is telling one bloc of voters it's OK to be pissed off at the other...   The pandemic of the unvaccinated framing actively encouraged one of the uglier and least productive societal reactions to COVID-19: Making the mere fact of contracting the virus a morality play falling largely along partisan lines. The whole notion that by "doing everything right," and "following all the rules," you will be righteously spared, unlike those anti-science people this summer down south.   That self-flattering narrative is collapsing, now that (as predicted) a stubbornly seasonal/regional virus has hit media/Democratic centers for a third consecutive winter. "Thousands who 'followed the rules' are about to get covid," ran the headline on a Washington Post "Wellness" column last week. "They shouldn't be ashamed." Lovely sentiment, that.   If the public health goal is to prevent unnecessary deaths by persuading fence-sitters to take the life-saving vaccine, there are many strategies that strike me as more potentially effective than scapegoating, marginalizing, and punishing a population that's already disproportionately suffering from the disease. Starting with maybe studying, you know, behavioral science... politicians and public health officials might consider telling the whole relevant truth as they know it, rather than the partial bowdlerized truth as they mold it to shape public behavior.  It's not just Biden busting the fact-check-o-meters; it's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky, as Jacob Sullum pointed out just today: "Time and again during the COVID-19 pandemic…Walensky has proven herself untrustworthy. The latest example is Walensky's slippery response to criticism of a study that she has repeatedly cited to justify the CDC's controversial recommendation that K–12 schools require students to wear face masks as a safeguard against COVID-19."  Public health officials have been unreliable narrators about the science of masks, the science of social distancing, the science of outdoor transmission, the science of outdoor dining, and the science of reopening, almost always in the direction of favoring their preferred restrictions. Responding specifically and factually to expressed reasons for vaccine hesitancy is not only more moral than compulsion and demonization, it might well be more effective at the stated goal... Maybe instead of directing rage at a subset of our fellow countrymen who are getting seriously ill in disproportionate numbers, we should personally live as though we are in an endemic, and otherwise try to persuade our recalcitrant loved ones that this mild cough and week-plus indoors is a damn sight better than the alternative. Politicians might not be able to shut off their internal machinery of rhetorical division, but weren't you supposed to be better than all that?"

Ontario town requires full vaccination to get married | The Post Millennial - "If you're looking to get married in the town of Oakville, Ontario, you now have to show proof of full vaccination in order to obtain a marriage license"

COVID-19: stigmatising the unvaccinated is not justified - "There is increasing evidence that vaccinated individuals continue to have a relevant role in transmission. In Massachusetts, USA, a total of 469 new COVID-19 cases were detected during various events in July, 2021, and 346 (74%) of these cases were in people who were fully or partly vaccinated, 274 (79%) of whom were symptomatic. Cycle threshold values were similarly low between people who were fully vaccinated (median 22·8) and people who were unvaccinated, not fully vaccinated, or whose vaccination status was unknown (median 21·5), indicating a high viral load even among people who were fully vaccinated... People who are vaccinated have a lower risk of severe disease but are still a relevant part of the pandemic. It is therefore wrong and dangerous to speak of a pandemic of the unvaccinated. Historically, both the USA and Germany have engendered negative experiences by stigmatising parts of the population for their skin colour or religion. I call on high-level officials and scientists to stop the inappropriate stigmatisation of unvaccinated people, who include our patients, colleagues, and other fellow citizens, and to put extra effort into bringing society together."

COVID-19 booster shot needed to maintain fully vaccinated status from Feb 14: MOH

Unvaccinated people to be barred from returning to workplaces, even with negative test result - "“Following the review and discussion with tripartite partners, we have decided to remove the PET concession for unvaccinated persons to return to the workplace from Jan 15, 2022,” said MOH in a press release issued at 11pm.  In an update on Wednesday, MOM clarified that the measures will apply to both employees and those who are self-employed... "This change will help to protect unvaccinated individuals and to create safer workplaces for everyone"...   Vaccination also will be a condition for the approval or grant of new long-term passes, work passes, as well as permanent residence... Vaccination will also be required when renewing existing work passes."
Tis better to be infected with covid than to be unvaccinated. Of course vaxholes still pretend this is about protecting other people; I pointed out to one that he was doing a bait and switch in going from talking about covid apartheid protecting the unvaccinated themselves to claiming that it was necessary to protect others within 2 hours, and he was either too stupid or too disingenuous to realise what I was talking about, claiming that covid-19 was new so the science changed (apparently the science changed in 2 hours)

Philippines' Duterte threatens unvaccinated people with arrest - "Duterte in an televised address to the nation said he was asking community leaders to look for unvaccinated people and make sure they were confined to their homes"
According to vaxholes no one is forced to be vaccinated. Good luck applying this logic in virtually every other area of life (then again, liberals are now claiming that facing "consequences" doesn't mean you have no freedom of speech, which "coincidentally" is what totalitarians say too

Quebec expands vaccine passports to liquor, cannabis stores, with 3rd dose requirement on the way - "According to the leader of the province's Liberal Party, Dominique Anglade, the Coalition Avenir Québec is making decisions related to the pandemic based on political considerations instead of science.  "They've lost control," Anglade said.  The government did not do enough to anticipate and slow down the virus's fifth wave...   She highlighted the fact that this week alone, the province has modified vaccination requirements, reduced the availability of PCR tests, changed the isolation rules for the general population as well as staff and children at daycares.  "All of this is creating a lot of anxiety in the population, and François Legault is nowhere to be seen this week""

[WHY] The unvaccinated in Korea and how they deal with the vaccine pass - "“Even when I go to a restaurant by myself, people like the employees whisper around me after noticing that I am unvaccinated,” Oh told the Korea JoongAng Daily. “It’s not like I did anything wrong, but it seems like people are treating me like a criminal.”   Oh did receive her first vaccine, but found out that she was pregnant one day before the appointment for her second jab. She chose not to get the second shot since she was advised by her doctor to not get it, concerning potential effects it could have on the baby... The unvaccinated adults have been essentially barred from public facilities including indoor gyms, bars and clubs from November, and then additionally banned from theaters and museums from mid-December, as Korea began expanding its vaccine pass system amid its worst and longest wave of the pandemic. They are allowed to eat alone at restaurants and cafes, but there have been reported cases of unvaccinated people being turned away at the door even if they're alone. The pass system for those aged 12 to 18 was waived until March 1, and recently halted indefinitely by a local court at certain venues.    The vaccine pass system requires full inoculation, proven with a QR code, or a negative PCR test. The PCR test is valid until midnight two days after receiving the result via text message.   Starting Jan. 10, the unvaccinated in Korea were also barred from large supermarkets and department stores — specifically, those larger than 3,000 square meters (32,300 square feet).    There has been increasing public backlash against the system recently, with around 1,000 doctors and other professionals filing a case to a local court to stop expanding the vaccine passes, which they said infringe on the "basic rights of the people." The court announced its decision on Friday to place a temporary halt on the system across large-sized supermarkets and department stores, but only those in Seoul."...
Ko Yu-bin, a 25-year-old office worker in Pangyo, Gyeonggi, noticed her eyesight worsened after she was administered her first shot in early December.   “Everything is so blurry, and it never gets better,” Ko said. “I don't think I can get another vaccine, I’m so scared.”...
For 22-year-old Kim Ha-jin, who was diagnosed with pericarditis, or inflammation in the heart, following her second vaccine, the scariest part was not when the heart-attack-like pains would occur, but the unknown afterwards...  Discharged from the hospital, her chest pains and breathing problems continued for three months, but when she asked her doctor about them, the response she got was the same — the medical world doesn’t have enough data on these side-effects... “I didn’t get vaccinated due to my health condition, but once was kicked out of a restaurant just because I’m unvaccinated,” said Moon So-ri, a 30-year-old resident of Goyang, Gyeonggi.   Moon recently underwent heart surgery and has to take special medication for three months. She was told by the doctor to not get any vaccines while taking the drugs since, taken in tandem, she could develop unusual blood clots...    
“If some people say they don’t want to get vaccinated, that’s their right. The government has no right to oppose their decision,” said Dr. Ma Sang-hyuk from Fatima Hospital, who also served as the former vice president of the Korean Vaccine Society.   “The inoculation rate in Korea is very high compared to foreign countries, but we now know that vaccines are not the key solution to the pandemic,” Ma added. “The way the government has been pushing forward with the system has no regard for the welfare of the people.”... Officials of the Health Ministry have repeatedly emphasized that the vaccine pass system is designed to "protect the unvaccinated."... Kim Woo-joo, a doctor specializing in infectious diseases at the Korea University Guro Hospital in western Seoul, said the vaccine pass system itself is not the problem, but the way the system has been implemented in Korea.   “The unvaccinated are not the main ones getting infected these days — among the Covid-19 patients aged 60 or over, 85 percent have been fully vaccinated,” he said. “But [the government is] going after the unvaccinated by enforcing the vaccine passes at even essential stores.”...  People who have had serious reactions to shots, such as anaphylaxis, a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction, and could not complete the vaccine course or get a third booster shot, have to present a note from a local health center to prove they have a valid reason for not getting their shots.   A doctor’s note from a private clinic is not acceptable, and there is no waiver for pregnancies, according to the Health Ministry... A local court in Korea recently placed a temporary halt on the expansion of the vaccine pass system, citing concerns on human rights.    On Jan. 4, the Seoul Administrative Court ruled that private educational facilities, such as hagwon (cram schools), reading rooms and study cafes, should be temporarily excluded from the list of establishments requiring a vaccine pass for entry — effective immediately.   “In order to implement a policy that would be unfavorable to a certain group of society, in this case the unvaccinated, there needs to be a rational reasoning behind it,” the Seoul Administrative Court said in a statement. “As we are seeing a hike in breakthrough cases, we cannot conclude at this point that the unvaccinated [should be barred from these facilities because they] could be the main source of future Covid-19 cases.”"
Weird how there're medical exemptions if the aim is to "protect the unvaccinated". The elderly need to be subject to covid apartheid too to "protect" them, since they are at an elevated risk from covid

Facebook - "Twitter just locked my account for another one of those memes calling vaccine passports systemically racist. The Woke elites REALLY don't want people to know that they're just using minorities and don't believe anything they say about systemic racism."

Facebook - "You are apparently allowed to call everything systemically racist (math, surfing, physics, hiking, a rock, etc.) on Twitter *except* vaccine passports. Isn't that interesting?"

Facebook - "Hi Ibram X. Kendi, would you mind commenting on whether vaccine passports are racist policy given that they will have undeniably racist outcomes? Isn't your definition of racism "racist policy that has racist outcomes done by racist people"? Are the people pushing them racists too? Thx"

Hannity slams NYC vaccine passport, says it will disproportionately hurt black New Yorkers - "'Remember for months now Democrats insisted that all forms of voter ID, yeah they're racist. They called voter verification voter ID laws 'Jim Crow of the 21st century' and 'Jim Crow 2.0''  'But apparently identification for daily activities is Democratic approved'... Hannity noted that statistics show that only 33 percent of black people in the city are vaccinated, meaning very few would be allowed to enter most places of business.      'That would mean 66 percent, fully two thirds of African Americans will be barred from restaurants, from concerts, from venues where you have ballgames, movie theaters all in New York City'"
Apparently liberals imagine that Jim Crow only applied to voting, and not all other life activities

Black Lives Matter Leader Calls Vaccine Mandates Racist, Disrespectful - "More than 70% of Black Americans between 18 and 44 in New York City have not gotten the vaccine, a statistic repeated by activist Chivona Newsome at the restaurant protest of Carmine’s Italian Restaurant. Hawk Newsome, a Black activist and the co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Greater New York chapter, organized a protest outside of the Manhattan restaurant where a hostess claimed three Black women from Texas attacked her after she asked for them to show proof of vaccination.  Newsome and his sister, Chivona, organized a protest outside the restaurant earlier this week where Hawk accused the city of using vaccine requirements to cover for its “racist ways” and “discrimination.”... “We are not anti-vaxxers. Some of us are vaccinated,” Newsome said of his group. “It’s an individual’s choice. No one should be forced to put something in their body.”... Newsome, like other Black Americans, cited the Tuskegee Syphilis Study as an example of the exploitation of Black Americans by the U.S. government.  “I think, in a perfect world, vaccine requirements] should be business by business. But it could be a slippery slope, so the mandate should be removed completely,” Newsome told Yahoo News. “It’s not gonna be white men in suits on Wall Street who are gonna get stopped. There’s such hypocrisy in this thing.”  Newsome and the Black Lives Matter of Greater New York are advocating for the complete abolition of vaccine requirements at the city and national levels."

Black Lives Matter of Greater New York leader blasts vaccine mandates as racist and disrespectful - "three black women were taped attacking the waitress at Carmine's Italian Restaurant, after which they were arrested and charged with instigating a fight. The women allege that the waitress used racial slurs against them that provoked them, but no recording of such an altercation has been made public thus far. The owner of Carmine's, Jeffrey Bank, denied that his hostess used racist language while asking for proof of vaccination.  "Three women brutally attacked our hostess without provocation, got arrested and charged for their misconduct, and then, over the last several days, had their lawyer falsely and grossly misrepresent their acts of wanton violence in a cynical attempt to try to excuse the inexcusable," Bank said in a statement... A Black Lives Matter protester was recorded shouting at a member of the community anti-crime group "Guardian Angels" during the protest. The unidentified man, who was wearing a black tank top and mask, repeatedly shouted "suck d***" in the face of Patrol Lead for the Guardian Angels Joshua Penner... Following the death of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, which sparked several nationwide demonstrations and led to former police officer Derek Chauvin being convicted on murder charges, Newsome said if the United States doesn't "give [black people] what they want," they would "burn this system down," while refusing to clarify whether his statement was literal or figurative. At one point in the Fox News interview, Newsome also referred to Jesus Christ as "the most famous black radical revolutionary in history."... Newsome believes that black communities are being intentionally left out of discussions about vaccine hesitancy by left-wing politicians.  "It fits a narrative to say crazy Trumpsters are the only ones who don't want to take the vaccine""

Facebook - "Once a vaccine passport social credit system is implemented, you will never be allowed to assemble to protest CRT in schools again as parents. Or anything else as anybody else. They will find ways to deny you entry, shut down your bank accounts, terminate you from work, no-fly list, etc., for being a "public health threat" for having the wrong opinions (cf. "syndemic"). Antifa and BLM will be able to do whatever they want, though. At first. LOL."

Broad Vaccine Mandates Are a Serious Violation of Civil Liberties - "The government should not have the power to force you to make a private medical decision that has little effect on anyone else. Your vaccination status is, by and large, your business. The vaccines are not substantially blocking the spread of COVID-19: We all know countless vaccinated people who've caught the disease. This is particularly true of the omicron wave: It's great to be vaccinated, but the vaccine is not preventing you or your close contacts from contracting COVID-19. The vaccine is a personal health decision. It protects the person who gets it, and thus it's not really the government's business.   Yet countless municipalities, including our nation's capital—the site of this weekend's protest—are broadly mandating vaccination. In D.C., if you want to enter a restaurant, you have to show not just your vaccine card, but also a photo ID—like a driver's license—in order to prove that the card is really yours.  Note that D.C.'s COVID-19 mitigation policies have been, at all times, foolish. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser reimposed a mask mandate to deal with delta, even though the mayor herself had been partying maskless the night before. The district's vaccine mandate took effect last week, ostensibly to deal with omicron, but guess what? Omicron is largely over in D.C. Cases are plummeting. We will never stop cases no matter how desperately we mandate vaccines, masks, and everything else. The only thing we can control is deaths, but the government shouldn't force this choice on people. You shouldn't have to show identification to participate in social life—to leave your home. Isn't that something Democrats used to believe—or still pretend to believe? Certainly, in some cases, it is... That's an advertisement from the committee to elect Democrats to the House of Representatives. The thrust of the ad is that nefarious, moralizing Republicans are coming between you and your private medical decisions. Is that wrong? Of course. But the Democratic Party, vis-a-vis its leaders at the local level, and its national leader President Joe Biden, is wholly committed to the idea that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency of unelected bureaucrats, gets to interfere in your private medical decisions. You can't go anywhere without its permission. That's currently the Democratic Party's central policy commitment: Anthony Fauci knows best. Democratic leaders will make you provide a vaccine card and ID to participate in social life, civil liberties be damned.  It's funny, because in other circumstances, this would be the sort of thing that progressive civil liberties organizations opposed. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has waged war on the concept of voter ID laws—the idea that you should have to provide a photo ID in order to vote... But when it comes to vaccine passports—a roughly equivalent restriction on people's civil liberties—the ACLU has not denounced them. On the contrary, it wholeheartedly supports them.  "We see no civil liberties problem with requiring COVID-19 vaccines in most circumstances," writes the ACLU. "In fact, far from compromising civil liberties, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties."  If we lived in a world where progressive defenders of civil liberties were actually doing the right thing and fighting back against vaccine mandates, it would be easier to completely ignore and write off Malone and the anti-vaccine cranks who gathered in Washington, D.C., this weekend. But we live in a world where many of the supposed defenders of civil liberties have sided with the state. COVID-19 mitigation policies grow more unreasonable and oppressive—and more disconnected from reality—with each passing day. What is the ACLU doing about it? Nothing."

Oppressive COVID Measures for the Unvaccinated Were Based on 'Software' Error, Claims German Minister. - "In November 2021, news outlets reported on the increasing “incident numbers” in the city – where the figure grew from 111.6 infected people per 100,000 to 160 per 100,000 in a span of few of days. By the end of November, that number shot up from 209.2 to a record of 223.3.  The ostensibly drastic increases have been used to legitimize new COVID policy measures in the city. First, 2G (vaccinated or recovered) status limitation was announced in order to enter shops, restaurants, and clubs. Social contact limitation was mandated for the unvaccinated. After the order, Mayor Peter Tschentscher, claimed to observe an increase in vaccination numbers, and implied it was the only way out of the pandemic.   Now, an investigation from the Sueddeutscher Zeitung and Welt newspapers has found that the numbers in Hamburg’s Social Services departments were drastically skewed and, in most cases, they didn’t even know who was vaccinated and who was not. This, however, did not stop them classifying everyone with an unknown status as unvaccinated. Indeed, by the end of November, a whopping 70 percent of the positive cases had unknown status. In the second week of November, the Mayor of Hamburg held a press conference and incorrectly claimed that 90 percent of all new infections were amongst the unvaccinated. In addition, he alleged the 7-day infection average for the unvaccinated was at 605 per 100,000 and just 22 in 100,000 for the vaccinated...   Germany’s COVID measures targeting the unvaccinated were introduced in November 2021, and have used these two major data mismanagements as basis for legitimacy. Nearly 100,000 German citizens are believed to have participated in anti-mandate protests in recent days."

Rejected! Shaq Unleashes Fire On Vax Mandates, Exposes The Forced Jab Agenda - "Shaquille O'Neal absolutely posterized his podcast co-host when he comes out against forced vaccinations. His co-host tried to argue that no one is being forced, and Shaq shot down that talking point over, and over again...
Shaq: There's still some people who don't wanna take it. And you shouldn't have to be forced to take something you don't want.
Turner: I don't think people are forced to take – well there are some. We have a mandate at CBS.
Shaq: That's forced!
Turner: We have a mandate at CBS, but my point—
Shaq: That's forced!
Turner: I wholeheartedly—
Shaq: That's forced!
Turner: No it's not forced.
Shaq: It is forced! Because if the man don't take it the man's gonna get fired!
In today's world, this is a spicy take from Shaq. It takes courage to come out against something that all the forces of around you support. In today's world, being against mandates is somehow the same as being "anti-vax.""
If liberals like it, it doesn't count as coercion: I've some some claim that students in the US are forced to recite the pledge of allegiance (when they've clearly allowed to opt out)

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