GRANT STINCHFIELD (HOST): Americans should brace themselves for privacy to be lost and get ready for a vaccination passport. "Show me your papers" is about to become very real. It will allow airlines, businesses, foreign countries and, yes, the government of the United States, to check if you have been vaccinated.
Here is what is coming: in order for you to travel, go to school, and in many cases even return to work, you will have to demonstrate your health status. Prove to the world that you are okay before you can even engage in going about your life. They want an app on your phone, and each test or vaccine gets a QR code, like a boarding pass, it gets logged in that app. This is big brother on steroids, and everything that goes against the ideals of freedom.
The "vaccination credential initiative," they're calling it, includes big tech firms like Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce as well as the famed hospital system the Mayo Clinic. The goal is to come up with an international digital document that verifies a person has tested negative for COVID-19 and if they've received vaccinations. I'm not okay with this.
What if you don't trust the vaccine? Can't fly. You can't work anymore. What if your religious beliefs bar you from taking a vaccine? Pack up and go live off the grid? Come on. Lists and databases run by the government are never a good thing.
And if you think that's bad, I want you to take a look at this little-known bill that's been filed in the New York General Assembly. It is considering forcing you into quarantine, okay? That's what they want to do. The government wants the power to remove you from society altogether, detain you. This was first introduced in 2015, and it's now being reintroduced by the same guy.
It reads, quote, "Upon determining by clear and convincing evidence that the health of others or -- is or may be endangered by a case, contact or carrier or suspected case, contact or carrier, of a contagious disease that in the opinion of the governor" - ready for this -- "Such person or group of persons shall be detained in a medical facility or other appropriate facility or premises."
A COVID internment camp? The bill spells out that the governor or anyone he designates gets the power to basically lock you up.
Do you see it now? Let's round up all the Republicans, all the COVID patient Republicans, right before Election Day. The fact that an elected official wants to give the governor of any state, much less king Cuomo of New York, the power to round people up and detain them is disturbing, to say the least. But this is how the left thinks. You have no rights.