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WASHINGTON, D.C., January 22, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — In an executive order signed on Thursday, newly installed President Joe Biden imposed significant novel restrictions on travel while also initiating an evaluation of COVID-19 vaccination passports for such measures as well.

“In addition to wearing a mask, everyone flying to the United States from another country will need to test before they get on that plane, before they depart,” Biden said. “And quarantine when they arrive in America.”

Indeed, Biden’s order mandates masks in airports, and on most forms of public transportation, including commercial aircraft, trains, ferries, and intercity bus services.

Further, the order stipulates that international travelers shall be “required to produce proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test prior to entry,” and comply with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), including “periods of self-quarantine or self-isolation after entry into the United States.”

The directive goes on to oblige his administration to work with foreign governments, the World Health Organization, and other international “stakeholders” to impose consistent international restrictions in several aspects, including “quarantine, testing, COVID-19 vaccination, follow-up testing and symptom-monitoring, environmental decontamination standards … and contact tracing.”

Finally, the order directs his administration to evaluate the possibility of including COVID-19 vaccinations as requirements for international travel, that is, developing and requiring the use of vaccine passports.

The directive states the government is to “assess the feasibility of linking COVID-19 vaccination to International Certificates of Vaccination or Prophylaxis (ICVP) and producing electronic versions of ICVPs.” 

Trials of such passports are currently being funded by the government of the U.K., and last month an uproar occurred in Candida when Health Minister of Ontario Christine Elliott affirmed that people will be given proof of COVID vaccination that they may need for “travel,” “work,” and for going to the “theatre” or “any other places where people will be in closer physical contact,” which could include shopping centers, restaurants, and even churches.

The left-leaning Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) immediately hit back against what it called a “wrongheaded” solution, affirming that such a policy has “a coercive effect on the decision-making process” to take the vaccine, that “(m)eaningful consent is required for voluntariness to be genuine, and coerced consent doesn’t meet that threshold.”

Such a policy would result in “abuse, discrimination, and oppression,” CCLA Director of Privacy Brenda McPhail said.

“(W)e risk creating a dangerous social sorting, a categorization of human beings as safe vs unsafe, deserving vs undeserving, based on their personal decision about their health. We know what happens when we create social systems dividing people into categories — abuse, discrimination, and oppression,” she said.

In a letter to Justin Trudeau, the CCLA warned the Canadian Prime Minister that immunity passports were a “wrongheaded” and “bad idea” that would result in “negative human rights consequences.”

“Policies that facilitate (or the absence of policies/laws that prohibit) vaccination status from becoming a key to full participation in public life run the risk of rendering a voluntary vaccination regime de facto mandatory, via diffuse coercive impacts. If proof of vaccination is required to enter businesses, ride public transit, go to the theatre or a sporting event (all options that have been floated by different elected officials), this will inevitably have a coercive effect on the decision-making process individuals must engage in when considering whether to be vaccinated. Meaningful consent is required for voluntariness to be genuine, and state-sanctioned, coerced consent does not meet that threshold,” they wrote.

Though COVID-19 vaccines are vigorously defended by the media and health officials, there remain significant concerns regarding these vaccines, which have been rushed through the process of development, testing, approval, and now distribution, with a new “messenger RNA” technology, no industry-standard animal trials, or any sufficient studies on long-term effects.

These concerns include “allergic” and “potentially fatal reactions,” risks that these vaccines may cause infertility in women, result in an increased vulnerability to the virus, and present unacceptable dangers of long-term effects due to a lack of proper testing.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also drew up a document last fall listing the possible side effects from a COVID-19 vaccine, including strokes, encephalitis, auto-immune disease, birth defects, Kawasaki disease, and death.

Current reports reveal that COVID-19 vaccines have been linked to at least 55 deaths in the United States so far. Last, month, the Centers for Disease Control acknowledged that 3,150 people reported experiencing “health impact events” after taking the vaccines.

Lastly, in response to more than a dozen deaths tied to these injections in Norway, Chinese health experts recently called for the suspension of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, such as those made by Pfizer and Moderna.

It may be that for these reasons and more that a high percentage of frontline workers in hospitals and nursing homes are declining to receive these vaccinations.  

Before these vaccines even being released, Dr. Joseph Meaney, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, affirmed that informed consent is not even possible for these new vaccines since long-term effects remain unknown due to the lack of extended testing. 

Thus, any use of coercion of persons to receive such an injection, including the possible exclusion of the right to travel, remains “ethically unacceptable.”

Though the stated motivation for these orders is to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Biden’s directive did not mention any time limit to their application.