RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – While the city government of São Paulo has refrained – for now – from deciding to force bars, restaurants and shopping malls to require their customers to carry a vaccination passport, certain parliamentarians in the city of Goiânia, the capital of the state of Goiás, believe that copying Europeans and Americans is probably always a good thing.
However, bars and restaurants in Goiânia criticized the proposal of councilman Marlon Teixeira (Citizenship) to require a “vaccine passport” for customers.
The proposal is contained in a bill discussed in the City Council, which motivated heated discussions in the plenary session this Tuesday (31/8) when the congressman was even booed by a group in the gallery of the house.
The councilman suggests that the passport should be a condition for customers to go to public places (such as bars and restaurants) and events.
For the Brazilian Association of Bars and Restaurants (Abrasel), the measure is “ineffective in fighting the pandemic”. It creates a “differentiation between citizens” who have already been vaccinated and those who have not yet been able to.
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Many fear that forcing people to use a vaccine passport will lead to a two-class society: the “vaccinated”, who can move freely, and an underclass of the “unvaccinated”, denied access to many things.
However, the citizens of Brazilian cities were not asked whether they want such a rift in society, which will divide families and friends and inevitably lead to more tensions.
The bill was presented in Goiânia on Tuesday morning. Teixeira declared that the vaccine passport is a way to resume the economy’s growth safely. The requirement for proof of vaccination is already a reality in several countries, such as France and Israel, which pioneered this endeavor and inspired some Brazilian capitals.
But what is blanked out is that France is facing a growing wave of protests, and Israel is experiencing a new wave of infections, despite vaccine passports and the fact that the country is one of the most vaccinated globally.
“The pandemic is not over yet, so we need to give conditions for our businessmen, our entrepreneurs, and service providers to, within all the sanitary norms indicated by science, safely resume their jobs,” argued the congressman.
INEFFECTIVE IDEA
In a note, with a nationwide positioning, Abrasel president, Paulo Solmucci, reacted to the projects for entry into bars and restaurants only for vaccinated people and called the idea “ineffective”.
According to Abrasel, it creates, yet, “one more responsibility for the entrepreneurs and managers of one of the sectors hardest hit by the pandemic: that of inspection.
“The vaccine passport for bars and restaurants only generates agglomerations and a false sense of security. The key is to maintain the prevention protocols,” concludes the note.
A couple of days ago, the president of the Brazilian Association of Shopping Centers (ABRASCE) Glauco Humai was startled upon hearing on TV that shopping malls would, in theory, be required to follow a new protocol in the city of São Paulo and opposes vaccine passports as well.
TWO-TIER SOCIETY
Germany and France are among the most aggressive European countries when it comes to enforcing the vaccine passport.
As a result, they are not only facing massive protests from their respective populations. Still, they are directly responsible for the renewed rise of the far-right National Rally party (formerly Front National) in France and the populist AfD party in Germany.
Both parties condemn the mainstream covid narrative and are vehemently against the introduction of the vaccination passport.
INFORMATION WAR ON COVID VACCINES
Brazilian cities’ flirtation with the vaccination passport comes at a time when the information war over Covid vaccines is gaining momentum, and the narratives about whether they really protect or, on the contrary, could harm people are increasingly controversial.
On the one hand, there are vaccine advocates who believe the original promises of the authorities that vaccination is safe and essential for survival.
On the other hand, recent studies have shown that mRNA vaccines decrease the body’s immune defenses, with possible unintended consequences, which is exactly the opposite of the original promise of vaccines.
The New York Times recently ran an article entitled, “Israel, Once the Model for Beating Covid, Faces New Surge of Infections.”
The article openly admits that covid vaccines are given to 2.5 billion people around the world no longer work very well and that the people who took those vaccines are now the ones getting sick and dying.
If it turns out that Covid vaccines are indeed not only failing to deliver the promised results but, on the contrary, are harmful, cities having forced their residents to take the shot(s) for them to keep participating in society would likely face a flood of lawsuits.
The introduction of a vaccination passport, which restricts or prohibits access to public life, according to its opponents, is ultimately nothing more than coercing people who do not want to be vaccinated to get the shot(s) against their will. Otherwise, they will no longer be able to participate fully in society.