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Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal:
Editor:
Scott Gottlieb paints a far too happy picture of vaccine passports (“The Case for Vaccine ‘Passports’ [2],” April 13). These documents would, he says, serve “as a fast lane. Those who present proof of a vaccine might be able to skip requirements for a temperature check, health questionnaire or negative Covid test…. The ‘passport’ wouldn’t impose an intrusive new layer; it would eliminate other requirements.”
Sigh.
Government, of course, shouldn’t prevent businesses and other private institutions from requiring customers and workers to present proof of vaccination. Nevertheless, I dread a future in which people are accustomed to showing their health credentials as a condition for entering places that, until 2020, they freely entered without any such requirement.
The transformation of humanity over the past year is ghastly. We’ve become so frightened of each other that, from here on in, we will presume that each person who wishes to interact with us in physical space is a deadly threat until we’re shown official evidence to the contrary. How uncivilized. How unspeakably sad.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030