From the 16th of August, proof of vaccination will be required to enter any gym or fitness facility in New York City. This is already a requirement to dine indoors here in our own nation, and considering the government’s shift towards authoritarianism over the past 18 months, it seems fair to suggest that the current coalition will also consider parroting a similar policy here in Ireland.
This global shift towards authoritarian responses to combat the pandemic is nothing new or shocking. We have seen the right to travel freely restricted, the right to earn a living quashed and many other individual and civil liberties trampled upon under the guise of public health and safety. However, what is both new and shocking is the private sectors shift towards coercion and discrimination.
This shift is taking place globally. In the Australian private service sector, several gyms have taken it upon themselves to mandate the vaccine as a prerequisite for entry. Additionally, and unsurprisingly, we can also see this in the American private sector, where Google, Uber, CNN alongside others have implemented a mandatory vaccine policy for all employees, with Jeff Zucker stating that a ‘zero tolerance policy’ would be applied to the unvaccinated staff of CNN.
Now, I am sure there are some out there who would argue that these businesses have the right to refuse entry to any who do not comply with their specified requirements, whether they be customers or staff. I imagine that this argument would fall along the ‘no shoes, no shirt, no entry’ train of thought. However, I believe this view to be fundamentally flawed, coercive and ultimately regressive as it will pave the way towards the reintroduction of discrimination into our society based on medical differences.
Firstly, to examine the flaw in this potential policy; if the private sector is to take responsibility for the health and wellbeing of the nation, why stop at Covid-19? Why not require proof of overall health for many numbers of services provided by the private sector? Perhaps you should have to provide proof that you are free of STD’s to enter a nightclub? Or proof that you do not smoke before entering a gym? Retailers could increase the price of alcohol and tobacco to penalise you for making poor choices and acquiescing to your vices. The sale of fast food could be curtailed to combat rising obesity levels, alongside cancelling the production of extra-large clothes to incentivise the obese to change their habits. For the sake of mental health, Jack Dorsey could simply shut down Twitter once and for all!
Of course, this would all be ludicrous, but these are the contradictions and issues that arise when the private sector attempts to take responsibility for the health of the nation.
Although there is little evidence that the vaccine will be mandated by the government for the entire population as of yet, it is feasible that this may not be even required should the private sector attempt to take responsibility for the health of the nation by implementing a no jab, no admittance policy. By excluding those who may decline to be vaccinated for a multitude of personal reasons, the private sector will ultimately exclude many thousands of people from everyday society. Moreover, those unwilling to be excluded may feel obligated to abandon their beliefs and feel coerced into accepting a medical procedure they are uncomfortable with.
For a nation, who in the past decade has bent over backwards to be considered liberal and in the process has legalised both gay marriage and abortion by democratic vote, it seems strange that so many businesses are willing to swap their allegedly liberal views in exchange for policies that would effectively create a two-tiered medical society and reintroduce discrimination into our legislature. Evidently, the egalitarian rhetoric expressed by so many within the private sector each June is simply hot air and obligatory virtue signalling as suspected.
It seems apparent to this writer, that should we accept discrimination in the private sector on the basis of medical differences, that discrimination will ultimately become legitimized once more across many other fields and in many other contexts.