I’m having lunch with a friend who is in STEM.
Friend: Everybody needs to get vaccinated for COVID! I don’t want to be around anybody who isn’t vaccinated. They shouldn’t have access to any public space at all. Don’t even come near me if you are unvaccinated!
Me (chewing loudly): I’m not vaccinated and not going to.
Friend (without missing a beat): Oh, that’s OK. You, I love, so I don’t care.
This is hilarious. Shows your friend has not made his pro-vaccine views become a part of his identity.
This pandemic is over in the USA the moment everyone who wants a vaccine can get one, that is only a few weeks away now. Encourage the old people, obese, and sick vaccinated and let everyone else be. Things like requiring vaccines to go to college like we discussed before are just a low hanging fruit that is more bureaucratic ass covering than anything else.
Biden also recently said that no vaccine passports are being considered, nor will be considered at the federal level. This should be very welcoming news on this blog.
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I do agree with what you said overall. However, the statements from the White House are somewhat confusing. They are working with the companies to develop the passports, but at the same time, there will not be a federal requirement to use them. Why work on developing them then? It seems to me like the government is going to have the corporations do their dirty work of requiring the passports for them. I fear that this will be social media censorship 2.0. What, you do not like Walmart requiring a vaccine passport to let you shop inside? They are a private company and can do whatever they want! If you do not like this, why don’t you start your own chain of hypermarkets, this is a free society!
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I’m OK with private companies requiring whatever they want. If they want to appeal to COVID neurotics, then so be it. I’ll just go to the competition that doesn’t make unreasonable requirements.
Having said that, I highly doubt many companies will be making these requirements. The tech behind these passports is very complicated, super easy to falsify, and it’s just another level of unnecessary inconvenience.
In your example of Walmart, how would this really work? How can you possibly scale this to millions of people visiting Walmart stores? It would require an immense amount of additional infrastructure, security, and a nightmare of a software verification process to make this work. All this for nothing once COVID is completely under control in a few months?
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“I’m OK with private companies requiring whatever they want.”
I am sure you don’t actually mean this. Are you OK with private companies requiring that everyone who patronizes them is white? Should they be informed, for example, about the person’s HIV status? I would hope that we can all agree that in a civil society, there is a limit to what should private companies be allowed to require, that there is a line that has to be drawn somewhere.
“In your example of Walmart, how would this really work? How can you possibly scale this to millions of people visiting Walmart stores?”
Walmart has enormous infrastructure at their disposal and is able to track and distribute all the goods between the various stores. I am sure they can figure out how to check people’s vaccination status at the entry (or before paying for their purchase) if they are motivated enough. They even have an application for that already: https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2021/03/17/walmart-empowering-individuals-with-access-to-digital-health-records-in-partnership-with-the-commons-project-foundation-and-clear
I am sure that you can tie it to something like Sam’s club membership ID that can be scanned upon entry or whenever the person is ready to pay. We are at the point where the technology to implement the electronic vaccine IDs is available and can be deployed on a large scale. And if the American corporations cannot figure it out, I am sure that CCP will gladly help. They do have a lot of experience with such things already.
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“I am sure you don’t actually mean this. Are you OK with private companies requiring that everyone who patronizes them is white? Should they be informed, for example, about the person’s HIV status? I would hope that we can all agree that in a civil society, there is a limit to what should private companies be allowed to require, that there is a line that has to be drawn somewhere.”
That’s a lot of hypothetical scenarios. In practical and real terms, no serious business would make such requirements. And if they did, all the better, that way people know who to boycott and what businesses not to support.
“Walmart has enormous infrastructure at their disposal and is able to track and distribute all the goods between the various stores. I am sure they can figure out how to check people’s vaccination status at the entry (or before paying for their purchase) if they are motivated enough. ”
It can definitely be done, but as you mention, what is the motivation? I just don’t see the motivation to spend serious money to implement such a system and scale it to millions of people. Anybody can develop an app and put out some press release about it. It’s a different thing to scale this up and support it for a long time. That takes serious motivation and commitment.
“Walmart has enormous infrastructure at their disposal and is able to track and distribute all the goods between the various stores. I am sure they can figure out how to check people’s vaccination status at the entry (or before paying for their purchase) if they are motivated enough. ”
So like going to the airport where you scan your boarding pass. Who in the world would want to go through that just to go shopping? Businesses are not stupid, this would not fly.
It would also require people to have a capable smartphone, know how to install apps, and keep track of it. Not to mention the security liabilities due to hacking, phone damage, etc. All of the sudden your customer loses their phone and they cannot shop at your store anymore. The practical aspects of such a system are ridiculous.
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IMO there are any number of businesses already champing at the bit to have entry-by-smartphone-app-only. I have already run into at least one store with a “loyalty card” program that was entirely smartphone-based… so basically: if you don’t have a smartphone, you don’t get any of the discounts. They of course market to the yuppie crowd, so excluding the riff-raff is a bonus. If you can do it in the name of “covid” so much the better– then you’re not discriminating, you’re just keeping your customers safe.
But Walmart is not one of them. They don’t benefit from class signalling to the rich.
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“so basically: if you don’t have a smartphone, you don’t get any of the discounts. They of course market to the yuppie crowd”
This is what I’m talking about. If they want to target the yuppie crowd that’s totally within their right. Doesn’t mean that they are discriminating against the smartphone-less.
“But Walmart is not one of them. They don’t benefit from class signalling to the rich.”
Most companies don’t want to make it harder for their customers to use/buy their products.
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Should private businesses be allowed to prevent black people from coming to the premises? Should they refuse to feed people because they belong to a group that these businesses find dirty or diseased? Should they be able to discriminate against workers who have different political beliefs?
I find it very strange that we are still debating the right of businesses to discriminate against groups.
I’m not an arbiter of how far companies should be allowed to discriminate. As a society we have already made the determination of what goes too far. However, having the government tell companies what to do and allow on their platforms/stores takes us to a more dangerous path than just letting companies manage themselves for the most part.
These issue is such low hanging fruit. We have serious issues with monopolistic corporations that cannibalize and destroy any semblance of competition. That’s a far more important issue for governments to address than some hypothetical about how much they should be allowed to discriminate.
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Unless the friend came over Clarissa’s place or vice versa for lunch, it’s implied the friend isn’t too worried about covid-19.
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The friend both had it already and is vaccinated. With a week’s gap between the two.
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If they’re fully vaccinated, it makes sense they don’t care about getting covid-19 cooties from Clarissa from the viewpoint of risk to themselves. Maybe they have a special Clarissa covid exception, lol.
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” friend both had it already and is vaccinated”
your friend has got a lot of cognitive dissonance goin’ on….
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” a lot of cognitive dissonance goin’ on”
And (with a couple of other things I’ve read/heard/seen in the last few days) it brings a lot into focus…..
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Some of the vaccines are very effective against multiple strains (vaccines that stimulate the body to attack the spike protein), which is why they are recommended even for people who’ve had COVID before, to protect them against the strains they haven’t had yet (some of the newer strains are quite virulent and have pretty severe symptoms, so it’s worth trying to avoid them).
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“Some of the vaccines are very effective against multiple strains”
Are vaccines free in the US? If yes then they soon won’t be and the policy will change to not being vaccinated but having every available vaccination (with regular booster shots).
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You rock! Stay away from the big G compliance shot.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
Clarissa's Blog 
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