Are Americans supposed to accept that the government, private employers, and businesses such as airlines and Costco may stop you and demand that you show your COVID-19 papers? //

Currently, the COVID-19 vaccines are not U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved, but authorized only for emergency use. As an investigational product, the statute governing emergency use authorizations provides that the recipient be advised of his or her option to accept or refuse administration of the vaccine, something a DC District court considered in a 2003 case that ruled against forcing soldiers to take the then-experimental anthrax vaccine //

We have a constitutionally implied fundamental right to privacy; various guarantees in the Bill of Rights “have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance…creat[ing] “zones of privacy.” Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 484 (1965). The right to privacy encompasses everything from what we do in the privacy of our own bedrooms, to how we educate our children, and to what we choose to insert into our bodies.

The right to privacy also incorporates a right to be left alone, a concept dating as far back as an 1890 Harvard Law Review Article by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, in which they noted that our laws are universal and eternal, “grow[ing] to meet the new demands of society.” As time passed, “[g]radually the scope of [] legal rights broadened; and now the right to life has come to mean the right to enjoy life, — the right to be let alone; the right to liberty secures the exercise of extensive civil privileges…” //

Even the World Health Organization resists a COVID-19 vaccination passport, saying that “At the present time, do not introduce requirements of proof of vaccination or immunity for international travel as a condition of entry as there are still critical unknowns regarding the efficacy of vaccination in reducing transmission and limited availability of vaccines. Proof of vaccination should not exempt international travelers from complying with other travel risk reduction measures.”

And what of HIPAA? The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act applies to “covered entities” such as health-care providers, health-care clearinghouses, or other organizations that would be involved in the transmission of protected health information, or PHI. Covered entities cannot share your information — but you can. //

COVID-19 passports are government surveillance on steroids. COVID-19 has seen courts sanction unprecedented abrogation of our fundamental civil rights, in some ways that may leave permanent scars. September 11, 2001 led to the PATRIOT Act, which in retrospect a growing number of constitutional conservatives now decry, for its expansions have been monstrous.

Americans should not so lightly give up their liberty for commercial expediency, elite orthodoxy, or even illusory notions of safety. If we do, what downward ratchet on liberty will the next crisis bring?