Health apartheid is now upon us – and getting worse:
Hysteria over the Rona has already created a two-tiered society: those who fully buy the narrative and do everything and anything their health overlords and politicians tell them, and those who dare to still ask questions, to not rush into things, and who seek to think for themselves.
We have a new Jim Crow mentality – if not laws – now coming about. Those old laws enforced racial segregation – keeping the races apart. One group was seen as superior, the other as inferior. Today with things like vaccine passports, we are heading down a similar path: enforced health segregation. As Fraser Nelson from the UK says in a recent piece, “Vaccine passports would create a hideously divided two-tier society”:
It is deeply un-British to implement a scheme that disproportionately hits disadvantaged people. At times, it seems as if there is an international competition to establish who can be toughest on the unvaccinated. Emmanuel Macron deplores the “selfishness” of refuseniks, who he intends to ban from bars and restaurants. Italy’s new policy is summed up by La Repubblica as a “hunt for the unvaccinated”. For Bill de Blasio, Mayor of New York, it is now a condition of freedom: “If you want to participate fully in society, you must get vaccinated. Boris Johnson seems to agree, with discussions that the unvaccinated would be excluded from nightclubs, universities and possibly even their jobs.
It’s easy to see the power of the argument. Vaccination saves lives, so it’s time to toughen up the anti-vaccines. It was once hoped that voluntary adoption would lead to collective immunity, for around 60% of the population. But the more contagious delta variant raised the bar higher, closer to 85%. This leaves two options: vaccinate children or start culling adults. Politically, the latter is much easier.
But all of these discussions are taking place behind closed doors, without any votes and minimal control. Jacob Rees-Mogg may well tell Any Questions on Radio 4 that vaccine passports are not British, but such a debate does not take place in Cabinet, let alone Parliament. Too bad, because there is something to discuss.
Take, for example, the hypothesis that vaccine passports, while draconian, are very effective. The evidence is more mixed. Young Britons show no sign of responding to threats from No10 to exclude them from nightclubs or campuses. Macron’s plan for a “health pass” moved France’s vaccination rate perhaps 4% higher than it would otherwise be, but at a fairly high price; France now has regular national protests against Covid passports, coercion and the creation of a two-tier society.
Many of those parading make the same point: that vaccine passports would radically reshape the relationship between state and society. Until now, anyone who obeyed the law was free to do whatever they wanted. But a new principle is being developed. There will be two categories of citizens: one with the old freedoms intact and the other without access to various places (maybe even the workplace) unless they provide the correct credentials. Today, it is a vaccine against Covid-19. Tomorrow it may be something else.
He concludes:
Boris Johnson presented himself as a one-nation conservative, which is why it is so strange to see him proposing a new two-nation divide between the documented and the undocumented. If he now thinks the increase in vaccine passports is inevitable, then at the very least he should let Parliament have a full debate. For years he has been the strongest voice against ID cards and the division they would cause. It’s not too late for him to decide he was really right the first time around. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/05/vaccine-passports-would-create-hideously-divided-two-tier-society/
Every day we see more examples of this health apartheid. Here is one of the latest: CNN has just fired three people who were not vaccinated. Check this out:
CNN has fired three employees who violated company policy by coming to work unvaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. CNN chief Jeff Zucker told staff members of the firing in a memo sent Thursday that reminded them that vaccines were mandatory if they report to the office or out in the field where they come into contact with other employees. “Let me be clear — we have a zero tolerance policy on this,” wrote Zucker, chairman of news and sports for WarnerMedia. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/08/05/1025319741/cnn-fires-three-employees-work-unvaccinated
Of course at the same time they cannot fire those who have HIV. Go figure. But those seeking to demonise the vaxx hesitant are getting more shrill and uglier by the day. Consider a recent ugly hit piece by Australian commentator Joe Hildebrand. As one news report explains:
Former Studio 10 presenter Joe Hildebrand is the latest celebrity to publicly lash out at anti-vaxxers and vaccine-hesitant people. In a lengthy piece for news.com.au, the 45-year-old called non-vaccinated people ‘selfish’ and said that the pandemic was ongoing because of them. ‘Every single adult in Australia has now had weeks or months to get their first dose of vaccine,’ he wrote.
‘Anyone who hasn’t done so – without a literal note from their doctor – no longer has any excuse. ‘We are crushing our society, our economy, our relationships and our children’s future all for the sake of a selfish few – indeed a selfish many – who simply won’t do the smallest possible thing to make this all go away.’ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9870667/Joe-Hildebrand-says-theres-no-excuse-not-getting-vaccinated.html
Sadly you can read this piece for yourself. A closing line of his says this: “We are fast approaching a point where anyone who refuses whatever vaccine they are eligible for can no longer consider themselves a truly decent member of society.” https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/joe-hildebrand-people-who-refuse-to-get-vaccinated-are-no-longer-decent-members-of-society/news-story/9843d048ab2e740a95b0eafefc96e154
So there you have it folks: there exist two distinct camps: the pure, the clean, and the righteous, and the impure, the unclean, and the unrighteous. Joe belongs to the first group: those exalted, superior beings who can look down on others, and treat them as deplorable, second-class citizens.
Anyone for any reason who might have a well-founded hesitancy about the rushed, experimental Rona vaccines, who has legitimate questions, who thinks there might be something to natural immunity, and who is open to other proven treatments, is just NOT a decent member of society. They are indecent – they are evil.
Hmm, where have we heard this sort of language before Joe? Oh yeah, that’s right: the exact sort of thinking and rhetoric was heard all the time in Germany in the 30s and 40s. A certain group was deemed to be unclean, diseased, and spreading death and destruction. They had to be opposed, to keep the German people pure and uncontaminated.
The simple and ugly truth is this: Joe’s views are not unlike what was said of the Jews by the Nazis: they were unclean and a danger to society – they “contaminated” the blood of pure Germans. They were a clear and present danger that had to be severely dealt with.
One American Holocaust site looks at the various bits of Nazi propaganda used during this time to demonise Jews and get the population fully panicked about them. One of them was an “Advertisement Poster for Der Ewige Jude”. The site says this:
Originally created to popularize the anti-Semitic film “Der Ewige Jude”, translated as “The Eternal Jew,” this Nazi propaganda poster from Vienna, Austria (circa 1938) purports to demonstrate the alleged destructive influence that Jews wielded over Austrian society. The figure in this picture is easily identified as an antisemitic caricature, with a large nose, heavy eyebrows, long beard, and thick, curly hair, paired with a skullcap and overcoat meant to reference traditional Jewish styles of dress.
Der Ewige Jude was a film created by the Nazi German Ministry of Propaganda, filmed as a pseudo-documentary. This film depicts Jews as unclean and disease-ridden by comparing Jews to teeming swarms of rats, and characterizes Jewish ritual practices as disgusting, foreign, and dangerous in an effort to stir up antisemitic foment. Importantly, Der Ewige Jude ends with a speech by Hitler proposing “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”
Purported links between Jews and disease are hundreds of years old; see this 1720 edict from the USHMM collections issued by numerous European rulers barring Jews from entry due to concerns that Jews would spread disease in their borders. Conversely, Jewish populations have also been compared to diseases; see this French poster dated 1942-1945, reading “Tuberculosis, Syphilis, Cancer are curable…it is necessary to finish the biggest curse: The Jew!!” Ultimately, Jews were indeed victims of disease during the Holocaust as the result of unsanitary and overcrowded conditions in ghettos. Yet, Nazis used the skyrocketing rates of illness resulting from these abhorrent living conditions to identify Jews as agents of disease transmission, and that they must therefore be eliminated; see this 1941 Polish poster from the USHMM’s collections comparing Jews to lice, and identifying them as typhus transmission vectors. https://www.philaholocaustmemorial.org/antisemitism-explained/
There you go. We have been there and done that. To keep ordinary Germans “safe,” harsh measures had to be taken against the disease-ridden and unclean Jews. Today we have a new demonised underclass, a new group of despised untouchables: those who dare to question the narrative on the Rona, those who are not buying into the hysteria and panic porn, and those who have perfectly legitimate questions to ask about the Rona vaccines.
But Joe thinks such hatred and bigotry is all perfectly peachy. The bizarre thing is, he is sometimes passed off as a conservative, and is often on Sky News of late. There is nothing conservative about the reckless and inflammatory remarks that he made. Being free to choose, and championing limited government, are key aspects of the conservative worldview, not forced conformity, Big Brother Statism, and the erosion of freedom.
Take a hike Joe. I will side with freedom and with those who dare to think and ask questions. But the way things are going, soon enough these folks may appear – not with a yellow star on their clothing – but perhaps with a yellow needle.
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