Karen’s workaround to a ban on checking vaccine papers

by philg

If you read the news, you might think that Floridians are protected from demands to show medical records, such as vaccine papers. A November 18 story about a new law (passed by the actual Legislature; unlike other states, Florida is not simply ruled by executive order under emergency powers):

  • Private Employer COVID-19 vaccine mandates are prohibited.
  • Government entities may not require COVID-19 vaccinations of anyone, including employees.
  • Educational institutions may not require students to be COVID-19 vaccinated.
  • School districts may not have school face mask policies.
  • School districts may not quarantine healthy students.

How can Karen work around the spirit of this law? From the Baker art museum in Naples, FL:

  • Guests ages 12 and over must provide proof of a professionally administered rapid antigen test taken no more than 24 hours prior to the performance date or a professionally administered negative COVID-19 PCR test taken no more than 72 hours prior to the performance date.
  • In lieu of a negative COVID-19 test, voluntary proof of being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 may be presented.
  • In all cases, a valid matching photo ID must also be presented.
  • Ticket holders who do not comply with these policies will not be allowed into The Baker Museum or events on the cultural campus and may be required to leave.

So you need to bring part of your medical record (recent COVID test) or show a different part of your medical record (vaccine card). Either way, it is all voluntary.

On the other coast, the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach:

  • The health and safety of our guests is a top priority for the Norton Museum. Beginning October 1, 2021, guests (ages 12+) visiting the Norton Museum of Art will be required to show proof of a negative COVID-19 professionally administered PCR test taken within 72 hours; or a negative COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Test conducted within 24 hours; OR voluntarily show proof of COVID-19 vaccination (together with a valid photo ID for ages 18+).
  • Masks are required at all times regardless of negative tests or vaccination status,

How about the pop-up Art Basel at the city-government-owned Miami Beach Convention Center?

  • Every visitor age 12 and older will be required to provide proof of a negative, lab-administered COVID-19 test in order to gain access to the halls. Alternatively, visitors may opt to voluntarily provide proof of a completed COVID-19 vaccination or documentation of recent recovery from COVID-19 – issued by a licensed healthcare provider or facility – to gain entry.
  • In compliance with the Art Basel Miami Beach policy and safety regulations, wearing a mask covering mouth and nose will be mandatory inside the venue for anyone age 2 and older, whether vaccinated or unvaccinated.

Some photos from a 2018 visit to Art Basel (mask-free and no medical records check):

And, for Joe Biden:

(The Leader of the Righteous: “Unless we do something about [busing for desegregation], my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle with tensions having built so high that it is going to explode at some point. We have got to make some move on this.”)

Speaking of the Biden family, I wonder how many of Hunter Biden’s $500,000 paintings will be shown at Art Basel. It would be worth showing one’s vaccine papers to get a close look at these. Considering gallery fees and taxes, if Hunter Biden can sell only 20 works at $500,000 each, he will have recovered the $2.5 million that his child support plaintiff earned.

Maybe the requirements are looser back in Maskachusetts, since Covid has been controlled via universal vaccination, indoor mask orders for adults, school mask requirements for kids, and after-school sports mask requirements? (only 2,500 cases per day currently, compared to 2,400 in April 2020) From MassMoCA:

The plague-carrying unvaccinated cannot even think of entering, no matter how high the stack of PCR tests. Harvard has a similar policy for its museums, which were entirely closed for 1.5 years:

  • All visitors age 2 or older, regardless of vaccination status, are required to wear a face covering.
  • All visitors age 12 and older are required to provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test. Visitors age 17 and older must also present a valid driver’s license or government-issued form of ID, such as a passport.
  • Vaccination documentation must be authentic and reflect that visitors are fully vaccinated, having received their final dose at least two weeks prior to the day of their visit. Acceptable proof of vaccination includes a CDC COVID-19 vaccination card and vaccination records of COVID -19 World Health Organization-approved vaccines. We will accept photo of the card records or a digital vaccine record (such as may be displayed through an app like Bindle or a digital medical record like MyChart).

Some screen shots capturing this most epic of web pages:

I am longing for the day when every American will be able to get the purely voluntary RFID chip in his/her/zir/their neck so that vaccine status can be checked efficiently and contact tracing can be performed after a variant outbreak is discovered. Nobody will be required to get a chip, of course, but the “chip-hesitant” person will find that he/she/ze/they cannot go to restaurants, museums, airports, etc. Or maybe a chip-hesitant American will have to wait in a 45-minute line for a paper document check if he/she/ze/they wants to do anything outside his/her/zir/their home.

17 thoughts on “Karen’s workaround to a ban on checking vaccine papers”

  1. The only thing the Harvard policy was missing was an acknowledgement that your vaccination was likely done on lands stolen from the Wompanoag and Massachusett indigineous peoples.

  2. Reminds me of the last few chapters of the book “The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047” where they described the chipping of Americans as a way to be more efficient. They specifically call out the idea of not “mandating” chipping. but basically making life for the non-chipped so intolerable that chipping becomes a reasonable option. Great book – scary to see now how close to reality this fictional book comes….

    • In Europe identity cards already have an RFID chip. Who knows what is stored there. You can buy wallets with tinfoil lining to prevent third parties from reading it (conspiracy theorists were right yet again …).

    • Why do Europe bureaucrats need RFIDs? Based on comments in this blog I thought that European way was QR code. I bet some bureaucrats were bribed by an RFID maker, probably company from China. To be able not only view abstract art and beautiful silhouettes viewing abstract art in Basel art museum but also open a number only banking account there and buy a getaway skiing house in Swiss Alps

    • LSI: Not vaccine “passports” (which do use QR codes), real national identity cards which are already compulsory for every citizen. In a way every citizen (comrade?) is already chipped.

    • At least in Germany the chipped passports were introduced due to US demands after 2001. We are not particularly scared of the government abusing these chips for surveillance, more scared of them screwing up and letting everyone else use the collected biometric data… Probably Google will find a way to use it for advertising.

  3. They start with allowing PCR tests, then they’ll scrap them and only allow the vaccinated. This is happening in Europe right now. (Virologists say that all of this is nonsense and everyone should be tested, citing risk compensation etc.)

    Soon the outbreak numbers will fall drastically in Germany and Austria because they always do (the bell curve is really a thing). Then politicians will attribute the “success” to excluding the unvaccinated! Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

  4. UBS in Switzerland still wisecracks. That’s refreshing that at least there it did not change.

  6. Aren’t theses contrarian, conservative positions surrounding covid so radical that they begin to wrap around to the opposite, far end of the liberal spectrum? Employers can’t decide what’s best for their own businesses now, and big government knows best?

    • That’s a great question! It is complicated by the fact that any typical jurisdiction is covered by four governments (city, county, state, and federal) and these four may be in conflict.

      I don’t think it is fair to call someone who is against radical lifestyle and legal changes a “contrarian”. Nearly half of Americans voted for Trump and, therefore, for a 2019-style life (kids in school, no masks, gatherings, vaccines but only for those who voluntarily chose to get them, etc.).

      A Republican is not a “contrarian,” but merely someone whose views are in the minority.

    • Philg – certainly not every republicans or conservative is a contrarian, though it does seem to be gaining a hold on the party. If experts say one thing, do the opposite. The republican party has long relied on grand hypocrisy. Bemoaning deficit spending only when democrats are in power. GDP growth rates which are fantastic when there’s a republican in office, become totally unacceptable otherwise. Dozens of American’s die at foreign embassies under Reagan? No problem. Four American’s die when Hillary is secretary of state? A crisis of unimaginable proportions! Colin Kaepernick disparages the military by kneeling in protest. When the service of Kerry and McCain are disparaged publicly for political reasons, zero issue. Trump loses the election by millions of votes and 60% of republicans think there’s fraud. Less than 600 votes decide the Gore v Bush election, in which there were actual, physical issues with the ballots? No recount! The parties 180 degree reversal on what’s appropriate for supreme court voting. The list is endless. It’s all contrarian behavior. My theory is that a large percentage of republicans can’t, or don’t recall history, so the absolute lack of integrity with respect to hypocrisy goes unnoticed.

      Have not all of these Covid implementations existed prior in some form? Vaccines have been mandated for school aged kids for as long as I can remember. Military personal get all kinds of vaccines, and they don’t ask for permission. Employers mandate all kinds of behaviors and safety rules. Children with AIDS were not allowed to attend school, and Reagan didn’t want to get involved:

      “President Reagan, when he spoke publicly for the first time on the
      issue of whether children with AIDS should be allowed to attend
      school, stated somberly: “I’m glad I’m not faced with that problem.””

      So what exactly is new or different today?

    • The K-12 vaccine requirements question is the easy one to answer. What’s different is that kids were required, in some circumstances, to get vaccines against diseases that regularly harm children, e.g., measles. Ordering a 5-year-old to be vaccinated against a disease whose victims have a median age of 80 or 82 is unprecedented (and, against the Hippocratic Oath to administer, according to my physician friends).

      What precedents are there in U.S. history for quarantining healthy people? FDR quarantined Japanese-Americans and that was held to be legal by the Supreme Court (6-3; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korematsu_v._United_States ), but even with a wise and mentally sharp president such as Joe Biden making executive decisions, I’m not sure that is consistent with modern interpretations of the Constitution.

      (Are you sure that you want to use McCain as an example in our #StopAsianHate age> His injuries were due to his failure to follow training and get into the correct position before ejecting (i.e., they were caused by the ejection seat/airplane structure interaction), yet he left voters the impression that they were due to cruel treatment by the Vietnamese (who actually did their best to patch him up) and/or an inevitable consequence of the design of the ejection system (many engineers are Asian and therefore attacking engineered products is an example of #AsianHate).)

      I’m the wrong person to ask about our election system because I advocate for a return to the U.S. system circa 1800, in which people had to work for 8 years before becoming eligible to vote (minimum age 21 and “male” gender ID, which in those days corresponded to “worker since roughly age 13”). In other words, from my point of view, all U.S. elections since 1971 are illegitimate because the 26th Amendment allowed 18-year-olds to vote.

    • Philg – there seem to be about 7 vaccines that are commonly required for school kids. Among them is Chickenpox, which does not seem to be particularly harmful to kids and has no long lasting effects. So, I’m not sure your characterization is correct, that school kids only receive vaccines for things which are harmful to them.

      As for quarantining “healthy” people, that’s a pretty loose interpretation of what’s happening isn’t it? People who have been exposed, or who are entering the country or some island states are required to quarantine. It doesn’t seem unreasonable. And, you have the choice to not travel.

      Not sure what McCain’s injuries have to do with anything. The guy was a POW for over 5 years. That’s something considering a large portion of the country today can’t muster the courage and hardship of wearing a thin cloth or paper face mask!

      We know much more about the risks of vaccines, than we do covid. It may be true that kids don’t die from covid, but no one knows what the long terms risks are.

      There are many reports that vaccines do reduce transmission. It seems like a worthwhile to reduce the spread of covid among children, and in turn society at large, and the folks who are at risk of dying. Kids spread all kinds of illness at school, don’t they? And then on to parents and family, their co-workers, and so on. This is the deadliest crisis in modern history.

      https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211124-vaccines-reduce-covid-transmission-by-40-who

    • Senorpablo: Chickenpox is an actual disease for children and it will often cause permanent scarring (pits) of the face (not one of the bad things listed in https://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/about/complications.html , but many of the kids I grew up with ended up with permanent pits on their faces). At a minimum, a child is guaranteed to lose a week of school/play/sports from chickenpox and virtually every child, absent vaccination, will eventually get symptomatic chickenpox.

      “It may be true that kids don’t die from covid, but no one knows what the long terms risks are.”

      You’re in agreement with my physician friends! Their statement is a slightly modified version: No one knows what the long-term effects of these new vaccines will be on a child’s immune system.

      (Since SARS-CoV-2 infection is generally asymptomatic in children, if this virus is like most others, the long-term effect is that their immune systems will have been trained to recognize the virus and maybe they will be less likely to get killed by SARS-CoV-2 when they’re old.)

  7. The common theme in Left’s actions is complete lack of comprehension of the very concept of what is “voluntary”. For them choosing to part with you wallet when confronted by a robber is voluntary. After all, you could’ve voluntarily choosen to die resisting, right?

    This lack of comprehension goes into all their other policies such as ridiculous campus rules on dealing with rape – focusing on irrelevant details rather than the central question: was the sex coerced under a credible threat or act of violence?

    And it totally defines their economic policies: after all the taxes and regulations are pushed by elected reps voluntarily elected by people, right? To a leftist it means that the victims of taxation and regulations voluntarily agreed to parting with fruits of their labor.

    So this “voluntary” showing of vaxx status or else is completely within their normal worldview.

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