We’re often critical of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties here at Gript, and nearly always because, well, they’re not very good at defending civil liberties. It is unusual, for example, for an organisation dedicated to civil liberties to be at the forefront of demands for restrictions on the right to protest, as they are in the case of the doomed campaign for so-called “exclusion zones” around abortion clinics. Give them credit here, though, for doing what they are supposed to be doing. At least, at first:
Great to hear restrictions will end by 22 October ✊💙
We want confirmation that mandatory quarantine and discriminatory vaccine passes will be finished by then too. Funeral restrictions should be relaxed immediately.https://t.co/8E5hutXke3
— Irish Council for Civil Liberties 🏳️🌈 (@ICCLtweet) August 31, 2021
Click on that tweet and read the replies, and you’ll see how much hot water they are in with their usual base of supporters: Everything ranging from denouncing them as “Covidiots” to repeated assertions that vaccine passports are “not discriminatory”.
And of course, one day later, the ICCL was reverting to type, and apologising:
Yesterday we posted a tweet about the government announcement on restrictions which drew a negative reaction from some supporters. The tone of the tweet was wrong and we apologise for that. We also take your other comments seriously and want to respond.
— Irish Council for Civil Liberties 🏳️🌈 (@ICCLtweet) September 1, 2021
That’s embarrassing. Apparently deciding whether something is discriminatory, for the ICCL, comes down not to the facts of the matter, but whether taking the position is likely to impact the number of likes they get on twitter.
But, of course, they were right the first time. Vaccine passports very literally discriminate against people based on their vaccination status. Indeed, the discrimination is the point: The only reason they were introduced was because the health authorities – rightly or wrongly – believed that unvaccinated people eating indoors risked spreading covid. The point of vaccine passes was to keep unvaccinated people outdoors, while allowing vaccinated people indoors. They are literally designed to facilitate discrimination. How anybody can argue to the contrary is beyond understanding.
A different argument, of course, is that the discrimination is righteous and good, and that it encourages people who are unvaccinated to become vaccinated. The problem there is that “encourages” is just a nice word for “coerces”, and that ultimately you are coercing people to do something for the common good which is not medically necessary for themselves.
The vaccine, after all, though effective, is not medically necessary. It may be medically recommended (it was in my case), and it may be good for people collectively in reducing the risk to the state health service, but it is not strictly necessary for anybody. Many of us who took it do not regret it, and are glad we did, but that does not mean that it was necessary to save our lives. It does not even reliably save the lives of others, since the vaccinated can still transmit covid. In that respect, it is different to other things we regularly mandate, like speed limits, which are necessary to save lives.
So yes, the ICCL is correct: Vaccine passports are discriminatory.
But their problem, politically, is that this discrimination is also the main appeal of the vaccine passport. After all, that little document, whether you receive it by post, or electronically, is more than just permission to eat indoors, or take a flight. It amounts, for many people, to a certificate saying “You have done your part, here is your reward”. The discrimination against people who have not “done their part” is critical to the political appeal of the vaxport: It punishes the filthy, lazy, no-good anti-vaxxer, and rewards good diligent citizens. Of course, it is popular.
But it is also unsustainable. It is unsustainable because science is increasingly discovering that natural immunity to Covid is much stronger than vaccine-induced immunity. That does not mean for one second that those of us who are vaccinated made the wrong decision (rather the vaccine than getting covid unvaxxed, in my case, anyway) but it absolutely does render absurd the idea that an unvaccinated person with natural immunity should have to sit outdoors while the vaccinated, with weaker immunity and a higher chance to spread the disease, sit indoors.
The whole point of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties is to defend the public from politicians who want to restrict their freedom. That means, and should usually mean, that the ICCL is unpopular. After all, politicians who get into power usually have support. They usually pursue policies that are popular. If a politician is demanding fewer freedoms for people, it is usually because a substantial section of the electorate agree with them.
The ICCL, by contrast, exists to defend those freedoms, and make the case for them, independent of political concerns. That is their job. If they are popular, then that should be by chance.
Of course, as we see elsewhere, the ICCL has regularly failed to pass this test. And, having gotten it right the first time, in this instance, they felt unable to withstand the pressure for even 24 hours.
An entirely useless organisation.