Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the Thai "COVID Pass". This has been discussed not a lot, it has just come to the foreground in the past couple of weeks. I want to be clear, this is different, this Thai "COVID Pass". We are not talking about "Vaccine Passports" in an international context. That is vaccination documentation when traveling internationally; that is not what we are discussing in this video. We have done a number of videos on that topic and I have discussed, I don't have as strong opinions regarding that for a variety of different reasons but one being it is a very different thing. When you are dealing with Immigration, you are dealing with different sovereign states and movement of peoples between them. That is a different arena and the analysis in my opinion, ought to be different than talking about what we are talking about here this so-called Thai COVID Pass. 

For those who have ever seen the film ‘Coming to America’, it has Eddie Murphy, it is a comedy. Actually I think it is one of the funniest movies ever made. There is a great line where Arsenio Hall was playing a preacher, a reverend and he has this great line, it is just the way delivers it; I will botch it. Anybody that has never seen Coming to America, go check that out but it has this great line where he just says: "If loving the Lord is wrong, I don't wanna to be right", and I feel in the opposite about COVID Passes. "If hating the Thai "COVID Pass" Is Wrong, I Don't Wanna Be Right", okay? What I mean to say is I have a real problem, again not with vaccinations. Vaccinations in my opinion, again they are a modern marvel. I have said this before. It is right up there with antibiotics. I like living in an age of vaccination where we don't get polio anymore. It is really nice. Go back and read about people that got polio or mumps or rubella. I mean these were killers and COVID can be too. For a number of folks it can be deadly, especially for older folks. Not getting into all these statistics but there are shades of gray with respect to different people and different demographics react differently to different diseases. Again, I want to live in a world with vaccines. Vaccines are great; it is a great technology.

That said, I don't want to live in a world where people tell me I have to inject or ingest or put anything into my body and I really don't want to live in a world where it is made incumbent upon shopkeepers; those doing business; those living their lives; where they have to check or evaluate or scrutinize their fellow persons, their fellow man just out in the world, as to whether or not they meet certain standards with respect to their paperwork or their documentation regarding whether or not they have undergone certain health procedures. I don't want to live in that world. I also like living in a world of Doctor-Patient confidentiality, of medical confidentiality, privacy associated with medicine. I want to live in a world where people can make their own choices regarding their own health situation and yes there is a cost - benefit. The counter argument I often hear to this is the social compact argument: "We are all living in a society." Yes we are but just because we live in a society, doesn't mean we give up every notion of privacy, every notion of our basic human rights to make decisions as to what we will do within our own bodily integrity for lack of a better term, for our own health purposes. I want to live in a world where those notions are maintained as well. This "COVID Pass" and it is called a "Green Pass" in some jurisdictions; I have seen it called other things in other places. By the way, it is not unanimously popular by a long shot. A lot of people I think have a problem with this because again it doesn't come down to the notion of whether or not people should get vaccinated or vaccines themselves, that is not the thrust of this. It is the notion that the government gets to inject itself between two private individuals and their private undertakings; that is the big one in my mind. The other thing is that it indirectly and implicitly compels people to make certain decisions about their own health that they may or may not have otherwise made. To me that smacks of totalitarianism. That gets very, very creepy when we start talking about that. 

Again, international travel, at a certain point I think maybe you can say "well if a disease or whatever abates, maybe certain requirements are no longer necessary", but countries can make determinations about who they let into their country. That is an inherent notion of sovereignty and I understand that and to me it is a very, the response to well "This country says you have to get this inoculation". Just throw COVID aside for a minute. Country A says you have to get a yellow fever inoculation to go there. Well I don't want to do that. Well guess what? You are not going to Country A. That is how that equation falls out. If you don't want to get that, don't get it, go on, move on with your life. If you don't want to get that you are not going to go to Country A; that it is just how it is. They have no incumbent requirement that you do that. But people just living their lives and being compelled to carry around what basically is digital "papers", "papers please", "where are your papers?" and being required to produce this in mundane or everyday tasks, I have got real problems with that. I think from a legal analysis there are issues with that; from a human rights analysis there are issues with that; and frankly it is just, some people use the term, "did something past the smell test?" well for me it is: "does it pass the creepy test?" and this thing doesn't pass the creepy test. It is just creepy to me you have to walk around with something that says you are okay or you are approved based on whatever. Again once this type of infrastructure could be put in place it could, slippery slope arguments are what they are, but it is worth hearing out; it could lead to a situation where different criteria get put in for being able to undertake one's day to day life and now it is a pass for something wholly unrelated to what it began with. Again, I don't want to get into hypothesizing too much because you get too far out on a limb and there is no real point to the analysis at that point. For now I just think people can make their own decisions regarding their health and I think that is a good thing. At the same time vaccines are a great thing. Again they are a modern marvel. That technology has saved more lives probably, I won't say countless because you probably could count them but as a practical matter, it might not actually be countable. 

Long story short, the decisions on who does what with their body, I think it is a good thing and medical privacy is a good thing to maintain. That is a world I want to live in as well. A world with vaccines where people don't have to die wantonly without good reason where we can save lives but at the same time we can be free as well.