Tag: PASSPORT

Executive order – Businesses prohibited from asking for customers COVID 19 details

Executive

Executive order issued on Friday by Governor Ron DeSantis disallows businesses from requiring customers to provide any documentation that they’ve gotten a COVID-19 vaccine to gain access or service. Businesses that do this will not be able to get state grants or contracts, he said.

Governor DeSantis has recently dismissed the notion of so-called “vaccine passports” as conditions for travel or other activities.

“People have certain freedoms and individual liberties to make decisions for themselves,” Governor Ron DeSantis said during a news conference Monday when he announced that he would soon issue an executive order about vaccine passports.

He also said that: “I also wonder, it’s like, okay, you’re going to do this and then what? Give all this information to some big corporation? You want the fox to guard the hen house? I mean, Give me a break.”

The governor’s executive order says that no Florida government is permitted to issue vaccine passports or similar documentation “for the purpose of certifying an individual’s COVID-19 vaccination status to a third party.” It also says that businesses that do require patrons to provide evidence of vaccination or post-transmission recovery from the virus would not be eligible for grants or contracts funded through state revenue.

The request says that requiring vaccine passports “for taking part in everyday life — such as attending a sporting event, patronizing a restaurant, or going to a movie theater — would create two classes of citizens based on vaccination.” DeSantis said the order is needed to “protect the fundamental rights and privacies of Floridians and the free flow of commerce within the state.”

The idea of requiring vaccines is not exactly new; certain inoculation records are needed for school and for certain positions, for example. Yet, the possibility of such international IDs for the Covid has brought up lawful and moral issues — especially from traditionalist policymakers.

Governor DeSantis said on Twitter that he would push for the Legislature to enshrine his vaccine passport policy into Florida law.

No bills enacting restrictions on vaccine passports had been filed as of Friday in either the Florida House or the Florida Senate. But on Thursday, Senate President Wilton Simpson said his chamber would look into the issue. The 60-day legislative session ends April 30.

Some Florida associations have effectively organized endeavors to have supporters show they’ve been inoculated. The South Beach Food and Wine Festival, for example, is requiring confirmation of antibody or proof of a negative Covid test three days prior to going to any occasion.

Some public health experts were concerned that vaccine passports would impede those who have had difficulties in accessing the vaccines.

”We do need to be extremely careful with regard to equity when we’re thinking about vaccination as a rite of passage to enter economic, social, and other public interactions,” said Zinzi Bailey, a social epidemiologist and board member of the Florida Health Justice Project

She noted that many people still have not been vaccinated and that certain groups, such as Black and Hispanic Floridians, are still less likely to have gotten a shot.

Bailey said she doesn’t understand why the governor’s executive order talks about individual freedom but restricts business owners from setting policies to make their employees and customers safer.

A spokeswoman for the Florida Chamber of Commerce declined to comment on the executive order, saying everyone in the office was out for Good Friday.

The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Judy Lisi, president and CEO of the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa, is hopeful some Broadway shows could return to Tampa as early as this fall. A passport could help fill theaters faster, she said, especially if professional actors’ unions decide they won’t let members perform in venues without vaccine requirements.

”Our business is going to depend on a high level of vaccine,” she said. “Our audiences, we want to attract them and get them safely inside these theaters, and we need to get to 100 percent capacity.”

She called DeSantis’ stance on passports “unfortunate.”

”I just don’t think he [DeSantis] understands our business or the sports business,” she said. “We’re about people in seats sitting next to each other. So the vaccine passport could be critical for these businesses rebuilding and restarting successfully.”

COVID 19 – Floridians to get vaccinated if they desire

COVID 19

COVID 19 vaccine is now optional if the governor gets his way with it. After his vaccine controversy, here is another huge statement that is going viral.

Florida residents who plan to attend concerts and major sporting events in the pretty Sunshine State will not have to show proof that they have received the COVID 19 vaccine if Governor Ron DeSantis gets his way. The European Union recently announced its “Digital Green Certificate”. This would allow those who are fully COVID 19 vaccinated to travel freely across the bloc, Governor Ron DeSantis cautioned against so-called “vaccine passports.”

On Thursday, Governor DeSantis said that “I just want to make very clear in Florida, we are not doing any vaccine passports. All those experts said that it was a bad idea. I think it’s a bad idea and so that will not happen. And so folks should get vaccinated, if they want to, we’ll obviously provide that, but under no circumstances will the state be asking you to show proof of vaccination, and I don’t think private companies should be doing that either,”.

Moreover, he said each Floridian should decide for themselves whether they get the vaccine and what types of activities or events they’re comfortable attending.

“To start going down the road of vaccine passports, I mean, you have some of these states saying to go to a sporting event, you have to show either a negative test or a vaccine proof. I think you just got to make decisions. If you want to go to an event, go to an event. If you don’t, don’t. But to be requiring people to provide all this proof, that’s not how you get society back to normal so we’re rejecting any vaccine passports here in the state of Florida,” Governor DeSantis said.

On Thursday, Governor Ron DeSantis had a discussion with Dr. Scott Atlas, professor Sunetra Gupta, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and Dr. Martin Kulldorf and they all disagreed with the idea of vaccine passports and said it could do more harm than good.

“The vaccine hesitancy data show that the people who are hesitant to take vaccines actually tend to be the working-class people, poor, poor people, minority populations. We’re going to then turn around and say, ‘You have to have a vaccine passport to participate in American life,’ it’s going to be a new vaccine Jim Crow. It’s a huge, huge mistake that will undermine trust in public health, and I think it’s just morally, it’s just morally wrong,” Bhattacharya, from Stanford University, said.

The Biden administration says it is up to the private sector and nonprofits to figure out how Americans can demonstrate that they have been vaccinated or tested. However, President Biden did ask for unity and corporation to fight the virus.

“It’s not the role of the government to hold that data and to do that,” Andy Slavitt, a White House virus-response adviser, said this week. “It needs to be private, the data should be secure, the access to it should be free, it should be available both digitally and in paper and in multiple languages.”

The idea isn’t new. On its destinations page, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists each country and their vaccine requirements. Many ask for travelers to show proof that they’ve been inoculated against yellow fever, malaria, and other diseases.