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As a steadily rising number of fully vaccinated Canadians emerge from hiding to test the gradual return to pre-pandemic normalcy, a conundrum looms: what to do about those who, for whatever reason, haven't had a shot?
Striking the proper balance between public health and personal freedom, and figuring out whether one must be relinquished to protect the other, will become increasingly key as the country reopens.
I am scheduled for my second vaccination on July 12. The majority of British Columbians and Canadians will, according to media sources, be eventually fully vaccinated.
I oppose:
Any attempts by governments to force vaccinations.
Vaccination requirements for certain careers, employment and events would be dependent on contexts. For example, all medical workers would likely be required in most cases to be vaccinated for employment.
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For a growing number of jurisdictions and institutions, the solution is a vaccine passport, a document the bearer can show as proof of immunization against the coronavirus in order to be granted certain freedoms. On the flip side, those who can't produce such evidence because they couldn't or wouldn't get vaccinated could be denied access to businesses, flights and university dorms, to name just a few potential inconveniences.
With my limited, yet consistent, following on the mainstream media news and through online reading and listening; I have reasoned for over a year that more and more western jurisdictions, governments and some private, will favour vaccine passports as a solution.
For my few friends that have not yet been vaccinated, I have had greater concerns for his/her future economic and social welfare, and our ability to socialize together in many contexts, than concerns that he/she could be made seriously ill from either a form of COVID-19, or something else potentially out of China, or elsewhere. These concerns over limited economic and social freedoms have also been greater for me than concerns over possible side effects of a COVID-19 vaccine.
Ethicists, privacy advocates and civil liberties groups have warned that such requirements threaten to create a new two-tier society, benefiting those who have been vaccinated and ostracizing those who haven't.
Reasonable and I deduce a two-tier society will be true in at least some situations.
As of June 25, the latest update available from the federal government, three-quarters of Canadians 12 and over had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and 22 per cent were fully vaccinated.
For Arthur Schafer, founding director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, vaccine passports or "immunity certificates" are inevitable, but, he says, the federal government "badly dropped the ball" by failing to provide clear guidance to provinces and public health officials about how to manage them.
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Schafer says a fair system will ensure reasonable accommodation for those who haven't been immunized, and he points out those people aren't all Facebook-fuelled anti-vaxxers. Some are unsure because they're taking immunosuppressant drugs, for example, while others have legitimate concerns about the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines or justifiable fears borne from previous negative interactions with the health-care system.
"We should try to accommodate people who have objections, conscientious or scientific or even religious, where we can do so without compromising public safety and without incurring a disproportionate cost to society," he said.
If such accommodation isn't made, Schafer predicts, there could be a backlash.
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I think there would be some backlash, but how this would play out in the media and impact public reactions, time would tell.
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"If an alternative route is available, if it's effective and if the employer or the service provider doesn't make it available, then I think a challenge under human rights legislation would succeed," he said.
It is reasonable that there would be legal challenges. Not sure how various courts would interpret human rights legislation in Canada and elsewhere. Based on my limited academic study of law in secondary school and in post-secondary, academic tutoring, the interpretation of law is never purely objective, in my opinion. The law is interpreted through the consideration of case law (developed law), which is also influenced by culture, society and public morality and ethics.
This can certainly be seen in, for example, the evolution of marriage, divorce and abortion laws in western societies over the last several decades.
According to Ontario's former privacy commissioner, Ann Cavoukian, now executive director of the Global Privacy and Security by Design Centre, Canadians shouldn't be expected to surrender their personal privacy for the sake of public health.
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Cavoukian is concerned about what could happen to people's private health data under a vaccine passport system, and she worries that once it's surrendered, it will already be too late.
"This data will be retained in association with your geolocation all around the world," she said. "If you're travelling, going to a football game or whatever, this information will be tracked, and the potential for surveillance is enormous."
People that are not fully vaccinated could face nearly world-wide penalties from authorities that have connected, electronic, data.
Cavoukian says people will relax once the majority of eligible Canadians is fully vaccinated. When that happens, singling out those who aren't won't seem nearly as important.
Hopefully so in most western jurisdictions, at least...
Cara Zwibel, director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association's fundamental freedoms program, says it all comes down to choice.
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Like Cavoukian, Zwibel has serious concerns about sharing private health information, and she points out that while we might willingly hand our immunization records over to certain institutions, they're statutorily limited in what they can do with that information.
Legitimate concerns...
