Vaccine Passports: THIS Is Where It Leads

wherever you are in the world right now covered passports are being discussed in the us big tech companies are being granted the right to develop databases and here in the uk where i am covid passports are being discussed as a way of demonstrating whether or not you've had a covered vaccine is it right that big tech companies and the state are given the power to determine whether or not you can enjoy everyday freedoms are we moving towards id cards by stealth and further empowering massive centralized authorities that we have good reason to distrust as more and more americans are getting inoculated against coven 19 the idea of so-called vaccine passports has emerged as a point of contention vaccine passports would be a form of id to gain entry to certain businesses or cultural events that require patrons to be vaccinated there's a slight distinction in the way this is being rolled out in the u.s versus the uk because we have the infrastructure in the uk i.e a national health service this is something that can be mandated at a state level in the us which is a more corporatized country you can see that this power and authority has been granted to big corporations in both cases it's under the auspices of a return to normal life with no national standard states companies and health care providers are now coming up with their own options while overseas many european countries and global airlines are pushing their own vaccine passports hoping to jump start tourism that's an interesting way of bypassing it being a state decision isn't it like if a airline company says we're not willing to let you on our planes unless you can prove that you've been vaccinated the position we find ourselves in is if you want to enjoy or participate in ordinary life you're going to have to take new measures and israel already using vaccine passes giving those vaccinated access to hotels gyms music venues and even cruises royal caribbean restarting vaccine-only cruises from israel in may i suppose one of the risks is that it creates a two-tier society that people that have been vaccinated and can provide proof of it will have access to all manner of uh utilities that will be denied to people that either don't want to have a vaccine can't afford a vaccine are suspicious of vaccines don't participate in life you know there are all sorts of other social issues that come to the forefront economic issues race and class issues that are all highlighted by something like a mandated passport not to mention the idea that we were assured that there would never be an id card and a coveted passport in this country is an id card by another name stephanie here in the guardian said for months ministers have been telling us that there are no plans for vaccine passports while funding eight pilot schemes to test them matt hancock said the health secretary we're not a papers carrying country yet here we are with the government reviewing plans to become just that my personal feelings are that the institutions that have the power to carry this out have not behaved in a way that engenders trust up until now on under the skin soon we have edward snowden as a guest who risked his own safety and sanity and liberty to bring to the wider public the way that american government agencies behave in regard to data we're now on the precipice of granting those very institutions agencies and companies unprecedented abilities to control our lives and our freedoms in the end this issue becomes not about the pandemic but about trust and who we grant authority to and how they may use that authority the cabinet office minister michael gove says the government is studying a green pass system used in israel if the plan does require legislation the government may try to win over the rebels by promising it'll only be temporary perhaps for no more than a year firstly if it does require legislation surely something this radical does require legislation and assurances that it might be temporary for me don't feel that comforting because i feel like that when 9 11 happened for example the patriot act was introduced in america new government powers were granted typically when governments are granted temporary powers those powers are seldom repealed this could be a pivotal moment in history often disasters and times of crisis are used to leverage further power for already powerful entities read naomi client shock doctrines there's a long precedent for this technique find a problem provide a solution to that problem the solution to that problem impedes freedom of ordinary people and for me it raises huge questions about the way that we organize power more generally about how power is centralized the idea of this becoming potentially a global plan that affects our abilities to travel to interact to communicate to enjoy leisure activities is dizzying it draws concerns about privacy about discrimination even technically given that we don't have a national health care system and therefore no database so the question is not really can the government do it but if they legally collect it which they could how do they then collect it store it who has access to that information and what do they actually do with it so even though there's a distinction between how this is playing out in the uk and the us you end up at the same end point if you want to enjoy an ordinary life you are going to require id and how that id ultimately ends up being used is out of your hands once the technology exists the problem exists the pressure group liberty warned that vaccine passports could create a two-tier society where unvaccinated people overlap too closely for comfort with those who are already marginalized and discriminated against vaccine uptake is lower in black and minority ethnic communities often with good historical reasons to distrust authority figures and i would say that that distrust extends to all of us the fact is that all of us have a right to query in questionable authority all of us know that governments make pledges and then rescind them all of us know that big tech companies behave in ways that are questionable and these are the very institutions that are going to be granted further power a good example is you know how does the government ensure that your data is not shared with let's say police immigration officers uh employers based on what we already know how could we be certain that this information wouldn't be shared based on what we already know why wouldn't they share it in that way edward snowden julian assange figures that exposed the government's use of presumed private data already revealed to us the way that this situation will likely roll out how does the government avoid discriminating against the people who don't yet have access to the vaccine also you could make the argument that younger americans who are at the end of the line can't quite yet get vaccinated and therefore they could be discriminated against and also what activities are you going to keep americans from doing who are not vaccinated that is a big one when something suits the interests of the powerful it's very difficult to stand in its way we've seen how this pandemic has increased the power of big companies that makes me query the kind of measures that are taken to remedy the conditions we found ourselves living under from the same article once we've built a system that links our identity to our health data and made this a condition of re-entering pub cinemas or concerts or even our workplace we could link it to other data to public or private it's difficult to envisage these decisions ever being repealed it's difficult to imagine that the companies or states that we grant this power to won't take advantage of the ability to harvest data from other areas of our lives and to make decisions about the kind of places where we work the kind of access that we're granted to public utilities and amenities if it's convenient to their end to do so tech companies are working on digital vaccine passports that could help the us track people who have received coronavirus vaccines as more businesses and services reopen nationwide but some researchers believe that this effort could end up further dividing this already fragmented country one of the areas of concern is that people that benefit from these measures would be big tech companies and big pharmaceutical companies we already know they have incredible lobbying power we already know that they are able to exist to some degree free from the intervention of the law congress will interview mark zuckerberg for a bit but nothing will really be revealed so wherever you are in the world the impact is likely to be the same and whether this is a state issue or a big tech issue the results will be the same your ability to live an ordinary life will now be to a degree controlled by a powerful institution these apps are being pushed by technology companies this is not something that's coming from public health experts so we should all sort of be a little suspicious exactly this is something that tech giants are calling for and trying to sell public health officials on these companies keep telling us that they have the magic bullet those contact tracing apps though they didn't work when they told us that they could use artificial intelligence to optimize the world out of that vaccine it didn't work and now we're once again being told to just trust the app to solve this pandemic given what we know about how culture is operating how civilization is evolving it's pretty easy to envisage that we might find ourselves living in a society that is deeply stratified in fact we already do but measures such as this one might make already existing bifurcation more entrenched our ability to control and organize our own lives which is already under threat which is already in my view a kind of piecemeal version of what personal autonomy or be is now reaching a kind of critical moment where we won't be able to walk it back it's easy i think when listening to some of these experts and pundits to see a society that is edging towards the kind of dystopia that was previously in the realm of science fiction what we see here in new york city and other cities around the us is a movement to expand a very different technology a type of vaccine passport that wouldn't be used when you fly internationally but used when you go to work go to school even go to the local grocery store we don't even know if vaccine passports would help to solve our biggest problem stopping the spread of the virus we don't know how long immunity lasts we don't know to what extent vaccines reduce transmission or by how much or whether this varies depending on which vaccine has been taken we don't know how much a system would cost how we would know if it represents good value or whether our resources will be better invested in other solutions i feel like we're living in a time of division and uncertainty and the time of fear for me the this requires reflection calmness and a an assertion of personal authority an insistence on democracy if we respond to our understandable fear at this time by granting more power to organizations and institutions that have not behaved with our best interests in mind sometimes for centuries certainly for decades in the cases of big tech then we are facilitating a future that might be very difficult for us to participate in we can't any longer say we live in free societies freedom of choice freedom of speech all these cherished ideas are being exposed as symbolic as opposed to practical and applicable we need a country we need a world in which there is free discourse we need a world in which people can make their own decisions we need a world where we're free to look at the whole spectrum of medical evidence where people can make decisions based on their own personal medical history their own personal fears when you mandate that when you tie it to corporate power and state power the risks i think are terrifying so this might be an issue where you see people from across the political spectrum coming together in the interests of liberty and freedom whether you're a person that believes in donald trump or bernie sanders or jeremy corbyn or somewhat less feasibly boris johnson like you've find yourself now in a position where your family yourself your sovereignty over your own body have to be at the forefront of your mind and i am so worried that this vaccine passport drive will transform medical segregation into digital segregation in nearly every public space we're talking about something that could exclude millions of people from the necessities of basic life this is obviously a sensitive subject and i have to be careful talking about it because i want this video to be seen by as many people as possible my interest is in personal liberty personal awakening collective unity and social togetherness there'll be some people that think that vaccination passports are a great idea because we want to get back to normal life well i had questions about how normal life was going anyway and one of the reasons that i felt uncertain and unsafe in what was once referred to as normal life was because of the incredible power of centralized governments and big businesses and the way they operate in tandem to reduce the personal authority and autonomy of ordinary people like you and me wherever you fall on the economic scale the racial scale the gender scale all of these other scales our ability and our freedom to be who we are to live our lives freely is surely what defines all of us and this is what's at the heart of this issue we are potentially losing our ability to move freely to enjoy ordinary freedoms let alone build realities that are more reflective of who we are that take into account our complexity our diversity and our various and myriad ways of expressing who and what we are and how we want to live if you like this video please you know press like give it the old thumbs up if you've got any questions for us put them in the comments we read them and communicate please subscribe to this channel and if you're interested in personal awakening go over and subscribe to my side channel awakening with russell brand and if you want direct communication with me please sign up to my mailing list join the collective on russellbrand.com to receive regular bulletins from me thanks for watching this video this is obviously a massive issue and the conversation will be ongoing and we'll go through that conversation together thanks uh

Channel: Russell Brand

Views: 2,248,065

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Keywords: Russell Brand, Brand Russell, BrandThe, Russell Brand video, Russell Brand news, Russell Brand politics, News, Brand, politics, Russell, vaccine, passport, covid, virus, coronavirus, pandemic, covid19, freedom, freedoms, rights, boris, boris johnson, johnson, debate, civil liberties

Id: UGgvgKE0n8o

Length: 15min 39sec (939 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 07 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/NowhereLeftToRun21]

We must protect him at all costs