Last week NJ.com reported that Governor Murphy announced the availability of an app to store an individual’s coronavirus vaccination records. This is a good thing. The vaccination record provided when you get your shot is too big to fit in a wallet and there is too much chance of its getting lost. Or, you put it in a safe place and don’t have it when you need it.
Disappointingly, the state Republican party promptly tweeted negatively about allowing people who chose to be vaccinated this convenience. “’An app that stores our vaccination records? Sounds like a passport to us,’ the state Republican Party said in a statement Monday.”((I thought maybe NJ.com was not being accurate with its quotation, but that’s directly from an @NJGOP tweet.))
Opposition may not be so much to a person’s ability to prove voluntarily that the person has been vaccinated, but that proof of vaccination status may become a condition of entering places or undertaking certain activities. While medical privacy is no doubt important, would you allow Typhoid Mary to get a food service job just because she shouldn’t have to disclose that she will likely infect others?
I will go further than expressing disappointment. According to some political theorists, such as John Locke, who should be revered by libertarian conservatives, one of the few legitimate bases for the existence of government is to prevent one person from harming another or, to go slightly further, preventing activity that creates too great a risk of harm. (That is, after all, the moral basis for the prohibition of drunk driving.) The COVID pandemic is still causing harm and the loosening of restrictions on social activity and of requirements to wear masks was only made possible by the existence of vaccines. Vaccines benefit not only those who have been vaccinated, but the public in general as they make the transmission of the virus less likely to occur. If you are not vaccinated, you are causing an unreasonable risk of harm, especially if you are out in public no longer wearing a face mask.
Cruise lines desperately want to start sailing again, but the passengers need to be assured that the ships will not be floating petri dishes. To provide this assurance, the cruise lines have to be able to require that passengers be vaccinated.
People may have a right not to get vaccinated, just as adults may have a right to drink to excess, but if that right is exercised, the interests of others in reasonable safety justifies restrictions on their conduct (no drunk driving and limits on conduct that may expose others to the virus).
Under current circumstances, I believe that the government could be justified in limiting access to public spaces to those who have been vaccinated and can prove it. Certainly private property owners should have that right. So bring on vaccine passports.
Jay Bohn
July 19, 2021