‘Vaccine passport’ is outrageously unconstitutional

OPINION:

The vaccine passport: It’s here. It’s now. It’s real. And it’s outrageously unconstitutional.

Where’s the “it’s my body, I can do what I want” abortion crowd now?

Off and running to get their own coronavirus vaccination, no doubt. And that’s fine; free choice is free choice and those who want to vaccinate should, by all means, go ahead and vaccinate.

But to impose a vaccine as a condition of traveling — to set in place a “show me zee papahs, comrade!” type of system — is to suggest that government knows best what is best for an individual’s health and therefore has the right to strip that individual of the power to self-determine. That’s not constitutional. That’s dictatorial.

That’s China-style communist party clampdowns on freedoms, at their ugliest evil.

“Coming soon: The ‘vaccine passport,’” wrote The New York Times.

“Denmark, Sweden to issue digital vaccine ‘passports,’” France 24 wrote.

And it’s an idea that gathering steam in America, as well.

“One of President Joe Biden’s executive orders aimed at curbing the pandemic asks government agencies to ‘assess the feasibility’ of linking coronavirus vaccine certificates with other vaccination documents, and producing digital versions of them,” The Seattle Times wrote.

Coming to a smartphone held by you. Tech companies are rushing to get the app to the public. What a difference a few months makes. 

“I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against Covid than when I take a Covid vaccine,” said Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to lawmakers on Capitol Hill in September.

Oh, of course, all this talk about vaccine passports will be tamped down so as not to seem quite so alarming — or mandatory. 

Here’s one soft and soothing explanation, from Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, as CNN reported: “While we are not going to make vaccination compulsory or a prerequisite for travel, persons who have been vaccinated should be free to travel. This will provide a positive incentive for ensuring citizens are encouraged to undergo vaccination, which is the only way to ensure a return to normality.”

So the vaccine is not mandatory. Unless you want to move about freely. Then the vaccine is mandatory. So, too, the papers to prove vaccination. So, too, the vaccine passport. Not a conspiracy; just the truth.

“Vaccines must be part of a wider, coordinated approach that includes certificates and passes for safe cross-border travel,” said the Secretary General of the U.N. World Tourism Organization, Zurab Pololikashvili.

If Donald Trump were in the White House, these overseas’ opinions might mean zilch. Nada. Nothing. Yawn, who cares what the United Nations says. But today’s White House is a different beast. The Joe Biden administration is about globalism first, U.S. sovereignty second.

And given his remarks about coronavirus shots and vaccine passports — individual choice, not at all.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.