Guest essay by Eric Worrall
One of the distinguishing features of British society vs repressive tyrannies like the Soviet Union used to be that you didn’t have to carry identity papers to prove your right to walk down the street.
‘Freedom Pass, Please’: Boris to Introduce Covid Passports as More Lockdowns Loom
KURT ZINDULKA
22 Nov 2020The British government will reportedly introduce “freedom passes” and specialised passport certificates to people who have tested negative for the Chinese coronavirus, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to announce further regional lockdown restrictions following the end of the latest national lockdown in December.
The British prime minister will outline his plans for further localised lockdown restrictions on Monday, as well as a plan to introduce mass testing, in what the government is describing as a roadmap to some sort of normality next year.
The new normal that the British government is set to outline will reportedly include “freedom passes” for those who have two negative coronavirus tests per week. The government is also working with passport manufacturers to create coronavirus certificates for those that can prove they are free of the virus, according to The Telegraph.
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A source told the paper that the certificates would “allow someone to wander down the streets, and if someone else asks why they are not wearing a mask, they can show the card, letter or an App,” adding that it would permit a person to “to see their family, and normal social distancing rules will not apply”.
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Read more: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/11/22/freedom-pass-please-uk-to-introduce-covid-immunity-passports-as-more-lockdowns-loom/
Makes you wonder what other freedoms our beloved leaders are planning to remove.
Australia is regularly cited as a success story w/r to containing Covid-19, but as far as I know Australia never banned people from walking down the street. Australian politicians took a sensible position that the benefits of outdoor exercise on mental and physical health outweigh the remote risk someone will infect you if you pass them in the street.
I hear Victor and Ilsa will be swinging by Rick’s bar to get a hold of some
transit papersCovid Passports.Utter lunacy. In the US, we have masses of sheeple lining up for Covid tests because they figure (wrongly) that it gives them a free pass to celebrate Thanksgiving with others not within their household. Common sense would tell you that the virus doesn’t care that you’ve tested negative. Even if you quarantine between the negative test and Thanksgiving, which many probably won’t, you could be exposed to it at the family gathering.
I suspect that “freedom passes” are a gimmick to encourage people to get tested more often, since I assume they would only be in effect for perhaps one week. These PCR tests are essentially meaningless anyway. A positive test only tells you that you were exposed to the virus at some point, not whether you actually have the virus or not.
I highly doubt that police would be randomly stopping people on the street, asking to see their “freedom pass”, however, it could be an issue I suppose, during almost any minor infraction.
Far more likely to start with an app communicating via bluetooth to an existing entry portal – turnstile at sporting events, swiming baths, etc. which has been closed to the public for most of the year, and portrayed as a privilege for having a pass after the latest lockown, or the next one. Next in line is public services – schools, council offices, public libraries if any are left, etc. Next, it would be convenient to extend it to existing entry portals – tube stations, airports, etc. then other venues allowed to operate only if they sign up to resticting access in the same way – nightclubs, concerts. Next, better do those big enclosed shopping centres – it’s for your own safety, you know. By that time it has been normalised, and more likely that checkpoints would be set up in hotspots – again for your own good. A dystopian future that is only months away.
After World War II the UK population still carried identity cards. Young policemen used to stand on street corners asking to see indentity cards while achieving nothing but looking busy. This so annoyed the general public going about their legal business that the indentify cards were abolished by the government.
I can see these CoVid 19 passports going the same way causing an ever bigger disconnect between the population and the police forces. Remember in the UK the population consents to be policed by the police forces. The imposition of CoVid 19 could see the removal of this consent
“Remember in the UK the population consents to be policed by the police forces.”
When I were a teen there were lots of stories about the friendly bobby. – Days long gone.
Back in the 70’s Venezuela had responded to the Che Guevara types by establishing a national identity card: the ‘cedula.’ I went down to Maracaibo around 1973 to do some linguistic work in the Sinamaica lagoon. We had a family passport at the time and found it necessary to change to individual passports so we could return via different routes. The American consulate in Maracaibo was very accommodating; had us fill out some paperwork, hand over the old passport, and come back in a few days for the new ones. So I walked out without a passport–and of course, no cedula. This came back to bite later, when the local bus I was on was stopped and I had no ID. They weren’t at all impressed with my California driver’s license. So I spent a night in the local jail and found myself the next night in the back of a pickup with a bunch of ‘illegal’ Columbians being expelled to Maicao (in Columbia). Took one look at Maicao, and walked back into Venezuela. That’s when life got interesting….
js
I was thinking by line 4, ‘This bloke has had an interesting life!”
Starting to sound like the plot for V for Vendetta.
To bad the 5th of November has come and been forgot…
Well we all knew where this was going didn’t we?
Look it’s pretty simple: the public is in a panic, they are looking for anything that will give them a sense of safety. More testing resulting in negative results makes people feel safer–so only report positive results. Why not? Forget that the negative tests are even there. Because only positive ones matter.
Actually…..they do but so do the negative ones. Most especially the negative ones.
But what really matters are those that test for the antibodies–except–oh wait…um….yea….no test for that. No test for a natural immunity, because it “doesn’t exist”….really? How do they know? Oh wait…they don’t. What about all of those of us that displayed the exact same symptoms in JANUARY or December of last year or earlier..but no, we didn’t have it then because it wasn’t “discovered” in the US until Feb and people only started dying of it in April. Right. Sure. Uh huh. Was that before or after our CDC changed the reporting rules for tracking?
Nothing about this pandemic is above board–nothing. From Freedom Passes to Immunity Stars you stitch into your clothing, to reporting of cause of death, to testing, to the vaccine(s)….nothing except 1 shared commodity which can be monetized on the airwaves: fear.
I can see doing something like this as an incentive to get vaccinated, but tested? No. Too easy to later test positive. I would be happy to show a certificate that I had been vaccinated if it meant that I didn’t have to wear a mask. Probably also give them to people who have recovered.
I get the Libertarian argument, but people have demonstrated throughout this that they are idiots.
“The British government will reportedly introduce ‘freedom passes’ and specialised passport certificates to people who have tested negative for the Chinese coronavirus . . .”
So, two tests per week for each and every week far into the future to keep your “freedom passes’ active in the UK. Wow, I never thought that I would see the day that freedom was essentially put up for sale in the United Kingdom, and beyond that served out to the relatively few advantaged enough to be able to afford waiting in line twice a week to get a COVID-19 test. Sounds like a cost-vs-benefits analysis is in order to evaluate just incurring fines for violating the lockdown/mask order versus the two-tests-per-week-option versus the just-stay-isolated-at-home option.
I seriously doubt the COVID-19 testing will be provided free-of-charge (if nothing else, the UK socialized health care system will recover the immediate costs via future increased taxation of citizens). So, if this proposed new legislation is passed, personal freedom in the UK will come at expense of carrying a medical “passport” for travel within that country.
Coming next, a UK “passport” for the flu, and then one for the common cold.
Ultimately, freedom only for those proven healthy. Yeah . . . that’s the ticket!
And can the US be far behind in this concept?
“And can the US be far behind in this concept?”
No, too many of us have guns.
And now you realize the the true intention of our 2nd Amendment.
Doesn’t matter what you have when you have a populace with no real will to resist.
“…no real will to resist”
…yet!
Britain discovers the “propiska” the Russian internal passport used in Soviet and before that in Tsarist times to control citizens’ movement. Great hack!
Part of my job is to interview people living in homes that our service or delivery people will be going to the next day. Far too many people volunteer that they already had a negative COVID test not realizing that the negative test is only good for the moment that they took it. It is sad and disturbing that so many people are this ignorant of disease testing.
“A Portuguese appeals court has ruled that PCR tests are unreliable and that it is unlawful to quarantine people based solely on a PCR test.
The court stated, the test’s reliability depends on the number of cycles used and the viral load present. Citing Jaafar et al. 2020, the court concludes that
“if someone is tested by PCR as positive when a threshold of 35 cycles or higher is used (as is the rule in most laboratories in Europe and the US), the probability that said person is infected is less than 3%, and the probability that said result is a false positive is 97%.”
Actually I rather like the idea. Why should draconian restrictions apply to those who are immune? I had the COVID virus in August, which is the same or better than being vaccinated, yet all the restrictions still apply to me.
Rand Paul had it right – those who have already had it should be free from all COVID restrictions and regulations to pursue their lives nomally.
The problem is that people lie and cheat. That will certainly pertain to those who have never had COVID but will claim they did or those that will claim they have been vaccinated but have not.
Like everything else, honest people are not the problem.
And why exactly should draconian restrictions apply to anyone? Most of us do not know whether or not we have had COVID-19 since a high proportion of infections are asymptomatic. We do know the testing is not accurate, so are unlikely to find out. There are incredibly low numbers of actual cases as opposed to asymptomatic infections and false positives, and the herd immunity threshold is probably close in the northern hemisphere. Cross immunity seems to be a factor (mumps vaccine?) as to why the disease has not spread more widely. Whether immune through infection, novel vaccination, cross-immunity, or not immune, there is no need for draconian restrictions now, and there isn’t in the future.
Hence vaccination papers. Papers!! PAPERS!
Last week or two, there was a lot of noise about how Ticketmaster would not sell tickets to anyone who had not been vaccinated. That got “corrected” eventually, to where Ticketmaster said they were only going to collect vaccination status, and it would be up to the venue to make a decision.
It may happen here in the US as well.
As the vaccinated cohort grows beginning next month, there is going to be increasing pushback on the various mask mandates from those who are no longer potential carriers of the virus. They will be in conflict with the scolds of society who will demand the immunized either continue wearing a mask or provide readily visible proof of immunity. So, how to appease Karen? A badge, an armband, an “I got immunized” sticker?
Won’t surprise me if we start seeing similar in the US
That ship has sailed. Everybody tossed their privacy aside as if it were something of no value when social media and Google came along.
If you want me to believe your nattering about privacy, close your social media accounts and trade your “smart” phone in on a flip phone.