Promises Made, Promises Broken

Remember when President Biden and other politicians promised that there would never be vaccine mandates or vaccine  passports? At this point that’s just a memory. WGBH, Boston’s public broadcasting station, reported yesterday that Massachusetts Governor Baker, who claims to be a Republican, expects a state-sanctioned COVID-19 vaccination passport program to be implemented in Massachusetts and several other states soon. Is anyone surprised?

The article reports:

During an appearance on GBH News’ Boston Public Radio, Baker said a scannable quick response code, commonly known as a QR code, would show a person’s vaccination status and be made available for others to scan and verify.

“It’s a universal standard and we’ve been working with a bunch of other states, there’s probably 15 or 20 of them, to try to create a single QR code that can be used for all sorts of things where people may choose to require a vaccine,” Baker said of the passport program.

Baker showed hosts Margery Eagan and Jim Braude his code while in the GBH’s studios in Brighton.

“It’s my proof that I’ve been vaccinated,” he said.

Last week, new Boston Mayor Michelle Wu hinted that the city may implement a vaccine mandate for indoor recreation areas.

Baker defended the availability of COVID booster shots in the state, saying Massachusetts is providing around 55,000 total vaccination shots per day, including boosters, and has administered around 1 million booster shots. Baker compared that figure to the 80,000 doses the state was outputting last spring at the height of the vaccination push with the help of mass vaccination centers.

Baker said booster vaccines are available, but may not be in the most convenient locations for everyone.

“Now, they may not be in the place somebody wants to go to get one. And it may be a week or 10 days out or two weeks out before they can get one. But given the fact that we have far more demand now that we had a couple of weeks ago, we’re going to see if we can increase our capacity to do more,” Baker said.

This is not the freedom our Founding Fathers fought for.