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  Political practice in the US often seems to centre around everything but the facts of any given issue.  The pandemic being one of the most obvious examples.

So, we ignore the real-world material evidence of what Denmark is doing with their Corona Pass and continue to prevaricate in our approved left/right ideological ways.

Can we just be pragmatic for once with a touch of utilitarian goodness on the side?  Wouldn’t that be nice?

David Rovics writing for Counterpunch describes the pandemic angle of the left/right folly that is occurring in the US and to a certain extent, Canada.

“So when it comes to public health measures necessary to get a pandemic under control, much of the public is skeptical. They may be described as skeptical about vaccines, but I’d say it’s a skepticism, if that’s the right word, that far transcends any particular thing like that. It’s more a generalized skepticism of anything the government — any government, or particular ones, depending — might propose.

The far right is horrified by the idea of what in Denmark is known as a Corona Pass — a form of ID that verifies you have been vaccinated and have tested negative, in order to be allowed to do things like fly in a plane with other people, sit down in a cafe, attend a festival, etc. Through widespread vaccination and the use of the Corona Pass system, Denmark has thus far avoided the fourth wave of the pandemic that is killing so many people, especially in countries like the US, India, and Brazil.

But we can’t do that kind of thing, we hear from voices on the right, because maybe the virus doesn’t exist, or maybe the vaccine causes more sickness than the virus does, or even if the virus does exist and vaccines are good generally, these vaccines haven’t been tested enough, and if they have, people shouldn’t be required to take them, because that’s an infringement on their God-given individual rights. Their freedom to live free means they might have to die free, which is better than obeying a government mandate. And then add to the mix the fact that the only government mandates in the US that exist with regards to this pandemic so far are completely piecemeal, local, and therefore ineffective.

And then from the corners of the left we hear that having information like our vaccination status publicly available to the relevant authorities is the next step towards total control of everything by Big Brother, and as soon as we all have submitted to the magnetic strips on our ID cards, the next step are those FEMA concentration camps that the Spectrum always agree are waiting for all of the dissidents. Which dissidents will end up in those camps would be the main point of contention on the Spectrum.”