Vaccine passports and Locke’s Treaties on Government

Here’s a little something from the Swedish newspaper, Svenska Dagblatdet, translated into English by the fine app PressReader.

I’ve included it in my blog because I haven’t seen or heard debate in mainstream New Zealand media that questions our incoming vaccine passports.

New Zealand commentary couches a resistance to passports as “fringe” or minority thinking. There has been limited discussion in mainstream media about the passports, whose legislation was rushed under urgency, and whose restrictions are not time limited.

They are an abomination against New Zealand citizenry and one of the clearest example for why government power needs to be continually checked, lest it expand and limit freedoms.

For those interested in a backgrounder on political theory and the role of government, try here: https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-20-2-c-hobbes-locke-montesquieu-and-rousseau-on-government.html

ADDENDUM: 27 DECEMBER 2021

The government’s perspective from the attorney general: https://www.beehive.govt.nz/speech/legal-and-constitutional-implications-new-zealand%E2%80%99s-fight-against-covid

BACK TO THE SWEDISH PRESS

Sweden is also about to adopt vaccine passports, but here’s what their media reports.

The translation isn’t 100% grammatically perfect, but you get the gist.

Peter Wen­nblad: the vac­cine pass­port is the begin­ning of an down­hill

Peter Wennblad is deputy head of the editorial office. SvD.se/av/peter-wennblad · Nov 30, 2021

Man is imper­fect. She is occa­sion­ally lazy and often irra­tional, thinks short-sighted and makes reck­less choices. Part of being a free soci­ety is that the people who are part of it tol­er­ate each other’s dif­fer­ences and weak­nesses. That in many con­texts we are pre­pared to col­lect­ively take the con­sequences of indi­vidu­als mak­ing decisions that most of us may not like.

We there­fore do not think that the care should refuse to treat a crash-injured motor­ist who had post­poned put­ting on the winter tires. We let the neigh­bor fire leaves and branches in the garden, even though we think it would be nicer if he did not. We learn at school to see Voltaire as a model, who, accord­ing to his bio­grapher, said he was pre­pared to die for the right of oth­ers to express their views he did not share.

In short, we accept that our col­lect­ive com­munity will never be made up of only sens­ible ideal people who do the right, real and record-break­ing, and organ­ize soci­ety accord­ing to that under­stand­ing.

When Sweden in
tomor­row for vac­cine pass­ports for gen­eral events and pub­lic gath­er­ings, we are abandon­ing this sound and solid­ar­ity-based approach. In addi­tion to the unfor­tu­nate prin­ciple of the state impos­ing the regime (that both traders and non – profit oper­at­ors have the pos­sib­il­ity to impose restric­tions is not ques­tioned here), it is, as we have pre­vi­ously explained on the lead­er­ship side, highly unclear what the vac­cine pass­port aims at-pre­vent­ing Gen­eral spread of infec­tion, increas­ing vac­cin­a­tion rates or try­ing to pro­tect those who have chosen them­selves to take a con­scious dis­ease risk? There is no clear evid­ence that vac­cine pass­ports con­trib­ute to either to an extent that makes it worth the prin­cipal price.

For such there are, in sev­eral respects.

In the world around us
do we see how fast it can go once you have star­ted to Cana along the prin­cipal path.
Aus­tria intro­duces vac­cin­a­tion from 1 Feb­ru­ary next year. Polit­ical demands for vac­cine coer­cion have been raised in sev­eral other European coun­tries, includ­ing Ger­many and Italy. In Den­mark, the Folket­ing adop­ted a fast-track law at the end of last week, giv­ing employ­ers the right to ter­min­ate unvac­cin­ated staff. In the United States, pres­id­ent Joe Biden has issued an exec­ut­ive order for all fed­eral employ­ees to be vac­cin­ated, as well as all employ­ees of com­pan­ies with more than 100 employ­ees.

And in Sweden, it took two months for the mod­er­ates and the Centre Party to go from scep­ti­cism to endors­ing the gov­ern­ment’s author­isa­tion to the Pub­lic Health Author­ity without objec­tion.

This is des­pite the fact that the author­ity’s reg­u­la­tions on vac­cine pass­ports do not have both cri­teria and time lim­its, but apply as long as the ”tem­por­ary” pan­demic law is in use. The one that is expec­ted to be exten­ded for another six months in the near future, des­pite the fact that Sweden now has the com­pon­ents that were miss­ing when it was intro­duced – rel­at­ively low spread of infec­tion, get­ting ser­i­ously ill and high vac­cin­a­tion cov­er­age. The fact that the bor­der con­trols intro­duced against Den­mark dur­ing the asylum crisis in 2015 were sup­posed to be valid for ten days, but now enter­ing its sev­enth year, test­i­fies to how easy and how often the tem­por­ary becomes per­man­ent.

The ques­tion should be asked and dis­cussed is what more we are wait­ing for, given that covid – 19 is about to become an endemic dis­ease we must learn to live with.

How long should it take before health care is fin­anced and organ­ised on the basis of a new nor­mal state, instead of pre­vent­ing cit­izens from hav­ing to seek it with state inter­ven­tion and coer­cive meas­ures? This new nor­mal state must of course con­tain the les­sons that the pan­demic has given us, such as that eld­erly people should not be exposed to the risk of infec­tion in their homes.

But that we could live together in a soci­ety without ever expos­ing each other to risks we would really rather avoid, is not pos­sible as long as people are imper­fect. And since we are, and most of us are double-vac­cin­ated, we may not be able to or need to live up to Voltaire’s strict ideals.