Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing US Immigration and so-called vaccine mandates associated therewith. I thought of making this video after reading a recent article from METRO, that is metro.co.uk, the article is titled: US extends COVID vaccine mandates for foreign travelers. Quoting directly: "The US has extended its Coronavirus vaccine mandate for foreign travelers entering by air. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) policy around the vaccines was set to expire on Jan 8. But the policy will now be enforced at least through April 10, according to an emergency amendment," (I find this interesting, ‘an emergency amendment’, and I will get to that in a minute) quoting further: "an emergency amendment issued by the Transportation Security Administration. The extension means that all foreigners coming to the US will have to show proof of at least two Covid-19 vaccine doses or an acceptable single dose such as Johnson and Johnson. It makes the US stand apart," (yeah this is interesting too) quote: "it makes the US stand apart from most Western Nations which have lifted the vaccine requirements after they did not seem to curb infection rates." (I want to read that again: "it makes the US stand apart from most western Nations which have lifted the vaccine requirements after they did not seem to curb infection rates.") Quoting further: "The UK and most European countries have ditched the "vaccine passport" requirement." And good on them. The vaccine passport I think is horrible on multiple different levels most notably dealing with issues such as Medical Privacy which apparently everyone has just decided to just throw out and just not think medical privacy is an issue which when did we all decide on that? 

Leaving that side though, I am not going to get into issues of efficacy and safety. There are questions go out there that I think that reasonable people are discussing the topic of efficacy and safety with respect to this; again not really within the bailiwick of this channel but I think it is interesting, Thailand thought to rule on this and backed out. I thought it was a bad idea for Thailand to do that most notably because I think it would have had a tremendous negative impact on the tourism sector, I think there's no doubt about that if Thailand had implemented this, it would have had a negative impact on tourism. The same can be said for the United States I suspect. If I did a deep dive I would suspect that tourism is heavily down because of this. Meanwhile, and I said this with Thailand and it goes frankly just as much for the United States, what is the point of this? This thing is considered endemic at this point; everybody in the United States who wants to get inoculated can if they should so desire, so what is the point of the mandate? I mean again, reasonable people can disagree but let's go back a couple of years now. When it started, you can make the argument "okay, it is pandemic, and people that are in the country have yet to be able to get the treatment so we are going to mandate it for foreigners coming in because we want to protect our own population, okay." I understood the argument under those circumstances but under present circumstances none of that holds. 

Again that brings me to this "emergency amendment". I am pretty tired of hearing the word "emergency" after the last three years. We have been hearing it over and over for everything. It seems like every time you turn around there is an "emergency" that requires completely new protocols that frankly go against many of the notions in the case of the United States, pretty much all of the notions associated with the liberties enshrined in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence, quite honestly. A lot of things that happened in the past three years in US Policy terms completely went against many of those notions. I have said it before and I'll say it again, there's no asterisk on the Bill of Rights that says "well except in case of a pandemic". No, I mean those liberties are supposed to be unimpeachable, untouchable. You're not supposed to be messing with them under any circumstances. Folks took it upon themselves within the American Immigration and Public Health apparatus to just start dictating things. I think we are definitely seeing the pendulum swing the other way on that, we are starting to see some accountability there. That will definitely be a good thing to watch but yeah let's get rid of this. I don't understand what the point of this is at this point. I think the same analysis that applied to Thailand equally applies to the United States. The US should pull the Mandate. It is time to end this; where's the emergency? What are you talking about? I don't get it. Another thing, to note, is worth noting here is this applies to foreign nationals only. This does not pertain to Americans traveling into the United States. This is foreign nationals traveling into the United States. So again, just my two cents but yeah it is looking to be about time to kind of put this behind us, I would think.