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Next in the culture wars: Vaccine passports

As the ranks of the inoculated in the U.S. grow, businesses, schools and politicians are considering vaccine passports digital proof of vaccination against the coronavirus as a path to reviving the economy and postpandemic life.

But the idea is raising knotty moral and legal questions about whether businesses and schools can require them and whether the government can mandate vaccinations or stop organizations from demanding proof.

The answer to these questions is mostly yes, but the issue is fast becoming a political one. Vaccine passports are shaping up to be the next big clash in the American culture wars.

Today, the Republican governor of Texas barred many organizations from requiring proof of vaccination, following a similar move in Florida. Lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Arkansas and elsewhere have begun drafting legislation that would ban or limit vaccine passports. Some Republicans say the passports are Democratic overreach, socialism or an intrusion on personal liberty and private health choices.

Many organizations and businesses, however, see the passports as a way to keep employees, customers and others safe and are pushing forward. A number of universities have already said they will require proof of vaccination from students this fall, and airlines are trying out apps showing the vaccination status of pilots and crews.

Some countries have moved to institute national vaccine passports. In Israel, the Green Pass system has allowed a return to something similar to prepandemic life, as vaccinated individuals are free to go to concerts and restaurants and gather in groups. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced yesterday that Britain would create Covid certificates that would give holders access to public areas like nightclubs and to sporting events.

In the U.S., the Supreme Court has declared, in two separate cases, that government entities can largely require vaccinations for entry, service and travel. Private companies can also largely refuse to employ or do business with anyone they want, although states can probably override that by enacting a law barring discrimination based on vaccination status.

President Biden appears reluctant to wade into the fray, after signing an executive order to assess the feasibility of producing digital vaccination documents. The White House has said that it will not be pushing to pass a federal mandate and would leave vaccine passports up to the private sector, mystifying some local and state heath officials who want the federal government more involved.

In China, which has largely contained the coronavirus outbreak and made big strides in returning to normal life, many people just dont feel the urgency to line up for a vaccine. Others are wary of Chinas history of vaccine-related scandals, a fear that the lack of transparency around Chinese-made Covid-19 vaccines has done little to assuage.

Thats where the ice cream comes in. In Beijing, vaccinated people get buy-one-get-one-free cones. Elsewhere, local governments have published poems and warned parents that if they refuse a shot, their childrens schooling, future employment and housing were all at risk.

They say its voluntary, but if you dont get the vaccine, theyll just keep calling you, said Annie Chen, a university student in Beijing, who relented after she received two vaccine entreaties from a school counselor in about a week.

The all-out blitz appears to be working. Over the past week, China has administered an average of about 4.8 million doses a day, up from about one million a day for much of last month. The authorities hope that 560 million people will be vaccinated by the end of June about 40 percent of Chinas population.

Despite the surge in vaccinations, China still lags far behind dozens of other countries. Though the country has approved five homegrown vaccines, it has administered 10 shots for every 100 residents. Britain has administered 56 for every 100; the United States, 50.

Heres a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states.

U.S. coronavirus cases have increased again after hitting a low late last month, and some of the states driving the upward trend have also been hit hardest by variants.

A new study found that many children who never had Covid-19 symptoms later developed a mysterious inflammatory syndrome.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the risk of infection from contaminated surfaces, while not impossible, was very low, generally less than 1 in 10,000.

In The Atlantic, a writer explored memory, storytelling and how we will define the experience of living through the pandemic for future generations.

Swedens initial approach to the pandemic was unique, largely avoiding virus restrictions and mask requirements. The New Yorker looks at how the country has fared one year on.

Playing without capacity restrictions for their home opener, the Texas Rangers hosted the largest American sports crowd of the pandemic.

Researchers found that fan attendance at N.F.L. games led to episodic spikes in the number of Covid-19 cases in the surrounding community.

As some people start to shake off coronavirus precautions, those who are waiting their turn for a vaccine say the FOMO is real. Its like when every friend is getting engaged before you.

My uncle died from Covid complications in December, so for my family and so many others, we will grieve long after the pandemic is over. There is a sadness in my moms voice that was never there before. He was her younger brother and weve been unable to have a service for him. People are so excited to go out and get back to normal, but for so many of us, there is no normal, we will forever be a statistic. Its been difficult seeing so many people who dont take Covid seriously or wont get the vaccine. That has been something Ive really struggled with. Ive learned during the pandemic the only thing that really matters in life is holding close to your loved ones.

Sunnie Haeger, Denver

Let us know how youre dealing with the pandemic. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.

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Amelia Nierenberg contributed to todays newsletter.

Email your thoughts to briefing@nytimes.com.

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Coronavirus Briefing: What Happened Today - The New York Times

You know what you get for spending trillions of dollars you dont have? More fights over Dr. Seuss, cancel culture, and identity politics.

By any measure, the federal government has been on a spending spree for decades. Without getting bogged down in the green eyeshade stuff, suffice it to say Uncle Sam has been spending more than he takes in from tax revenues since the 1990s. Weve made up those shortfalls by borrowing money. The national debt ($28 trillion) is now considerably larger than the GDP (about $21 trillion).

Reasonable people can differ on how much value we got for all that credit card debt. But thats not relevant here.

Whats relevant is that when both parties reach a de facto bipartisan consensus that deficit spending is fineat least when their party is doing the spendingit makes it difficult to argue about overspending or overborrowing in a credible way.

For instance, during what was supposed to be the debate period for President Bidens $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, which spent plenty on non-pandemic Democratic priorities, the Republican National Committee was silent on it. The RNC did release two statements about itbut only after the bill passed. Yet plenty of Republicans found time to decry the cancellation of Dr. Seuss.

For the record, Seuss wasnt actually canceled. His estate announced that it wouldnt continue to publish a handful of his least popular and allegedly racially insensitive works. In what he thought was an act of defiance to cancel culture, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy staged a reading of Green Eggs and Hama book that wasnt actually canceled. That showed those profligate Democrats!

We tend to define bipartisanship as both parties openly agreeing with each other in a gauzy spirit of civic cooperation. But theres another kind of bipartisanshipwhen each party cynically and tacitly agrees to take turns doing things they denounce when the other party does them. Thats what the parties do on spending and debt (and Supreme Court nominations, gerrymandering, and a host of other issues). The cumulative effect is a political culture that says you can do whatever you can get away with. Why should voters care about deficits when most politicians only claim to care about them when its the other party increasing them?

But heres the catch. Political parties need to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Neither Republicans nor Democrats can run on the vow, Theres not a dimes worth of difference between us and the other party. So what does that leave? Culture-war stuff.

This is not to say that cultural issues arent legitimate or important points of disagreement in a democracy. They often are. But if thats all youve got to work with, youre going to make as big a deal of that stuff as you can.

As Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution recently noted on my podcast, The Remnant, this is precisely whats happened in Western Europe. Theres a broad consensus among European political parties on spending and a generous welfare state. This doesnt mean economic issues arent important to European voters. But the partisan fights are often over which state-dependent interestgovernment workers, unions, farmers, big businessshould get more subsidies or protections. Meanwhile, cultural issues like European identity vs. national identity and, especially, immigration become major sources of brand differentiation.

Indeed, immigration is a perfect example of what Im getting at. Its an important issue regardless of where you come down on the specifics of immigration policy. But theres a reason that Republicans and Democrats often invest so much more in the issue than it warrants. It taps into, among other things, questions of race, national identity, and the relationship between wealthy elites and average workers. Democrats love the issue because it lets them demonize Republicansoften but not always unfairlyas rank nativists and bigots. It lets Republicans rail about Democratic animosity toward the working class and indifferencereal or allegedto American culture.

Again, immigration is a legitimate issue to debate. But a lot of the culture-war trollingand much of the immigration hysteriathat takes up so much of our energy and attention amounts to a convenient distraction from the fact that both parties have spent this country into a hole it will take decades to climb out of, if either of them ever bothers to try.

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The Culture Wars as Distraction - The Dispatch

In the year since Gov. Bill Lee issued his stay-at-home order, weve seen the pro-life and pro-choice tribes largely swap values. Pro-lifers are now claiming a right to choose to defend their decisions and pro-choicers argue for restrictions in the name of preserving life.

Separated from the issue of abortion, what do these terms mean? To me, pro-choice emphasizes the liberty part of our inalienable rights. Obviously, you cant actively kill someone as that would infringe upon their right to life, but even an actively dangerous lifestyle is acceptable if others can distance themselves from your danger.

Even though smoking is detrimental to your own health and those near you, people can still see the light and plumes of your cigarette and choose to avoid you. They are informed and capable of avoiding you, so it is your choice.

Pro-life, it then would stand to reason, promotes the right to life more heavily than liberty. If it means protecting life and that certain choices should be taken away.

Some people will hang out with you regardless of your habits. Therefore, you should not be allowed to light that cigarette since second-hand smoke can be lethal.

Obviously, this doesnt just apply to smoking. Indeed, I want to focus on that C word weve already heard too much of: COVID-19.

Here in Tennessee, Lees stay-at-home order expired within a month and he declined to issue a mask mandate, instead encouraging personal responsibility to curb the pandemic. Many who consider themselves pro-choice were irritated, believing the lockdown should have been longer and that a mask mandate would have been prudent.

But if you are actually pro-choice, why would you want a mask mandate? If your chiropractor chooses not to wear a mask, you can choose another chiropractor.

Its possible, however, that no chiropractor in your area wears a mask at work, meaning you have to decide between risking COVID-19 exposure and severe back pain. If you additionally had a weakened immune system, that would be an especially cruel choice.

The other side has its share of hypocrisy, too, and its probably worse.

There are good odds (around 40%) that you will be unaware if you have COVID, and if you do have COVID, the chances also are such that infecting just seven customers while working at the caf will kill one person between those customers, their friends and their families.

Masks may not eliminate coronavirus transmission, but science agrees that they reduce it (by 40% to 70%). Nevertheless, it doesnt take long in Blount County to find a pro-life business owner who doesnt require masks.

Naturally, this is a generalization, but it is certainly ironic that those labeled pro-life on the abortion issue are more likely to defend their actions on a principle of personal choice while those labeled pro-choice tend to favor mandating what individuals wear.

The logical question remaining is why? A pro-choice pro-masker may point to the aforementioned cruel choice dilemma or assert the pandemic is different since the life being protected is already realized. A pro-life anti-masker might cite natural selection or skepticism of mask efficacy.

In truth, this role reversal mostly comes down to a perceived culture war especially for anti-maskers. The pandemic has become an extension of the broader political divide, with the pro-life and pro-choice camps largely defaulting to their conservative and progressive identities, respectively.

YouTuber CGP Grey summarized it well, noting how the pandemic quickly went from a humanity-uniting event to fracturing in the usual tiresome ways with two groups each creating a totem, they can yell about how the other side is not just dumb but maliciously evil.

That attitude has always destroyed civic trust, but in the past year it has destroyed lives. There is no cost to wearing a mask, yet many pro-lifers are happy to take an arbitrary stand against the progressives at the cost of their health and that of their loved ones.

As conservative columnist David Brooks said on the PBS NewsHour, The mask issue has become not a scientific issue, not a public policy issue, just a symbolic issue. And we seem to take every practical issue and turn it into a culture war issue.

In the long-term, our country would be better off not making every issue about the culture war. Rather, we each should identify our values and consistently use them as guidelines for personal, political and policy decisions.

But in the short term, I encourage us to remember that we humans ultimately value both choice and life. In these final months of the pandemic, we all have some choice. Lets choose life. Until we are fully vaccinated, lets wear a mask, watch our distance and wash our hands. Lets all do our part and care for the good of our neighbors.

Francisco A.J. Camacho of Friendsville is an undergraduate student at the George Washington University, writes for The GW Hatchet, and has contributed to The Tennessean in Nashville and The Daily Times. He welcomes responses, comments and questions relating to his pieces at P.O. Box 363, Friendsville, TN 37737.

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Coronavirus, conservatives and the culture wars | Opinion | thedailytimes.com - Maryville Daily Times

The return of the wolf and grizzly bear to the northern Rockies are two success stories that came out of the Endangered Species Act. In 1975, when grizzly bears were listed as endangered species, there were from 100 to 200 of them, mostly in Yellowstone and Glacier national parks. Their numbers are now estimated at about 1,800 in the Lower 48 states. The grizzlies were able to make that comeback largely because hunting was ended, trash was carefully managed and there was an effective crackdown on poachers.

Outside Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, grizzly bears roam mainly in wilderness areas of the state, though they are expanding into more populated areas where they are increasingly vulnerable to being hit by cars, shot by hunters, and killed or removed by biologists because of conflicts with humans. And bears and wolves pose a real threat to livestock and to humans. Every year, hikers or hunters are attacked by bears, and in many parts of the state anyone hiking is cautioned to be bear aware and carry a pepper-based spray for protection.

The debate over protecting endangered species, particularly predators, has long roiled Montana, pitting liberal urban areas in the state and across the country against rural ranchers who are increasingly concerned about their livestock being killed or hunters who think game animals are in decline. Until now, a measured approach which includes some hunting of wolves and intervention by the state when grizzlies get into someones beehive or chicken coop along with lots of protection have prevailed. But with wildlife management increasingly part of the culture wars, antagonism toward widening federal control and Republican control of the state, the balance has shifted, conservationists say.

The new bills approach management of bears and wolves in various ways. One of the new bills would pay wolf hunters their expenses in effect, critics say, a bounty to kill the animals. Another bill would allow for snaring animals with a metal aircraft cable fashioned into a noose that would hang over a trail. When the animal gets its head caught in one, it grows tighter as the animal tries to flee, until it is strangled to death. Snares can be used for coyotes in Montana but not wolves.

A major problem with snares is that they also kill species that are not the target, such as moose, elk, deer and even pet dogs. Snares are cheap, Mr. Bangs said. It isnt unusual for a trapper to set out 100. And you catch all kinds of stuff. Snares that were set for coyotes, for example, inadvertently killed 28 mountain lions from 2015 to 2020, Mr. Gevock said.

Another bill would extend the wolf trapping and snaring season. Wildlife experts say the extended season would overlap with the period that grizzly bears and black bears are out of their dens and could be inadvertently trapped. Another would reinstate hunting black bears with dogs and prevent Montana wildlife officials from relocating any grizzly bears captured outside recovery zones. Most recovery zone habitat are occupied, which means many grizzlies would most likely have to be euthanized.

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In Montana, Bears and Wolves Become Part of the Culture Wars - The New York Times

Political alienation and culture wars rage. So, it came to pass that there was social media chatter before and during the basketball game between Arkansas and Oral Roberts.

Some people were saying on Twitter that they hoped Arkansas lost because it was a state that had just enacted discriminatory legislation against the LGBTQ community. Others were responding that Oral Roberts University was no vehicle for hating on Arkansas, considering that the namesake was a raging homophobe and the current student handbook presumes to bar same-sex activity.

In the end, it was an excellent ballgame.

The dialogue was a microcosm of a broader dynamic Gov. Asa Hutchinson seems to count on.

I asked him over the weekend if he was concerned that his six-year emphasis on modernizing the state's economy had been undercut by his being overrun by an uncontrollable right-wing Legislature sending him culture-war bills he'd managed to stop in years past. These bills could prove damaging to the state's image to would-be modern employers who are committed to diversity and inclusion.

Once these bills got to his office, Hutchinson couldn't stop them because his vetoes can be overridden by a simple majority vote, and this Legislature shows little deference to him. But he could have vetoed them on principle anyway, or let them become law without his signature. He didn't have to sign them, except that he seems to seek continued Republican viability. So, he signed them in the two most-recent cases.

One bill banned something that isn't happening, meaning transgender girls outrunning everyone in track meets. It could be handled if happening by Arkansas Activities Association regulation and any litigation ensuing.

The other allows physicians to cite religious or moral reasons to decline to provide medical care. That could mean refusing to provide care for a transgender person. It could mean declining to provide care to a Donald Trump supporter, clearly a moral position, though that would be a good way for a doctor to go broke in Arkansas.

In both bills, the microscopically small-minded point is to waste legislative time and ink on matters addressing no legitimate public-policy need, but merely allowing pseudo-religious "Christian nationalists" to make themselves feel powerful by abusing their offices to pick on people they don't like or approve of or with whom they disagree.

Hutchinson has said the track-meet bill addresses pre-emptively a conceivable and legitimate concern. He has said the no-treat option for doctors has exceptions for emergencies and couldn't be applied on a basis discriminating against groups.

In other words, he is saying he has managed to come up with rationalizations for signing them.

So, back to my question on whether the governor was concerned his long and diligent attention to modern economic consideration was being undercut: Hutchinson replied without addressing my characterization of his being helplessly overrun by an uncontrollably extreme Legislature. He said instead that these bills weren't all that conspicuous, or will prove not to be as we go along.

He said many states have conscientious exceptions for medical services (most are for abortion alone). He said Tennessee had just passed a transgender-girl athletic bill and measures were pending widely elsewhere.

Forgive me for continuing to rephrase the governor's positions, which could well lead him to stop answering my questions in the first place. But I see a contextual imperative.

In that regard, what the governor is saying is that there's a raging red-state, Trump-allegiant section of the country out there, and Arkansas is but a part of it, and we will not be alone in the occasional enactment of these sorts of laws.

Modern progressive businesses would have to boycott a bunch of them, not just us, presumably.

People may want to root against the Razorbacks, but then they'll find out Oral Roberts is no better, or worse. You see.

But the governor, being an honorable and thoughtful man along with one given to political expedience, did acknowledge as follows: "I am concerned about the overall impression of this session and I hope we can focus attention on the economic, education and reform successes that are being accomplished."

I am not sure what those successes are, but I suspect that the governor's communications staff can prepare nice, thick packets for all of us.

In the meantime, the governor's centerpiece hate-crimes bill seems dead, and I continue to be impressed with the evolving sensibilities of Sen. Jim Hendren, who, in case you haven't heard, is Hutchinson's nephew.

The newborn independent and founder of Common Ground Arkansas tweeted after the dramatic end of the Arkansas-Oral Roberts game: "We should have extended March Madness instead of the legislative session."

John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

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OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Asa and the culture wars - Arkansas Online