This, I hope, is the beginning of an important conversation about freedom and protecting ourselves. It's about the "COVID Passport" concept and true freedom. I agree with Sara's position: what do you think?
--Kim
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Conservative whining about vaccine passports won't change the fact that they're going to be an essential tool for getting past this thing.
I'm in Hawaii right now. Their entire economy depends on, and is being saved by, a very tight passport system that vets everybody coming to the islands. Vaccinated or not, you need a COVID test taken less than 72 hours before you arrive. The tests can only be performed by clinics specifically approved by the State of Hawaii. (Fortunately, the University of Washington clinic where I got my shots is permitted for this, so it was easy.) If you're clear, they e-mail you a PDF of a QR code, which you download to a Hawaii "Safe Travels" app that you carry on your phone.
We had to open the app and show the code -- our passport --when we got on the plane in Seattle; when we got on the inter-island flight from Honolulu to Hilo; when we picked up the rental car; and when we checked into our hotel.
Hawaii County, which covers the Big Island, also tested me again when we landed in Hilo. Evan didn't have to, because he's 2+2 -- but I'm not quite there yet. We're headed for Maui next Monday (the same day I will finally be 2+2), and since Maui County is the strictest of all of the islands, they may well have the same requirement or more.
This is a no-brainer for Hawaii. As an island state that's always brought immigrants and visitors in from all over the Pacific Rim, various plagues have always been a threat. The islands were devastated by measles and pertussis in 1848, which is thought to have played a major role in weakening the monarchy; and again by the Black Death in 1900. This is a vivid part of their history, and they do not mess around -- especially since they're trying to preserve a culture, and need to keep their elders around to do it. They are taking no risks here.
Since there's only one way on or off the islands -- via some kind of air or sea port -- they've also always had the ability to tightly control who arrives and who stays. So a passport system makes perfect sense for them -- a historical, logical, natural imperative that allows them to open up enough to keep their $10B/year tourist economy going.
Compliance isn't even a conversation here. That "freedom" crap you hear on the mainland? Yeah, no. Everybody understands that real freedom is being able to make a living, feed your kids, and live unafraid in your community -- and if one jerk lets up and starts an outbreak that shuts down the islands, they directly threaten everybody else's freedom to do that.
It's also easier because masks aren't required if you're outside and well-distanced; and because it's Hawaii and the weather is perfect, there's a whole lot of life that's lived outside.
Hawaii is showing that we should -- and do -- have a right to cordon off spaces where moral five-year-olds (for whom "freedom" comes down to "Mom's not the boss of meeee!!") are rightly excluded; and where grown-ups can go about their business and relax, knowing that everyone is equally invested in keeping the zone COVID-free.
Getting the damn passport -- test, e-mail, app, filling in all the details to meet the state reporting requirements, pulling out IDs and vaccine records four times in a few hours -- was a time-consuming hassle. But, unlike our recent travels on the mainland, the upshot is that we're having a real vacation here.
Once people start creating similarly safe spaces on the mainland -- where you enter with confidence that everyone is either tested or vaccinated, and life looks more like normal as a result -- I don't know how you put the genie back into the bottle. Conservatives are trying get out ahead of this, passing laws now to ensure that most of us will never get to experience this, and thus get the idea that passports are a good thing. But the coming split in American culture is going to be the widening chasm between those of us with passport documents showing that we've been liberated from the land of plague; and those of us who think living in the valley of the shadow of death, clinging to the right to take other people's lives with stochastic impunity, represents a special and sacred form of "freedom" for both themselves and us.
We deserve to have passports to keep us away from people who stand willing and ready to kill us. As of right now, those people can't come to Hawaii.
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