Editor’s note: In light of the increasing push for COVID-19 passports around the globe this article has been updated on August 20, 2021.
(LifeSiteNews) – Something conservatives and those wary of government vaccine campaigns have warned about for months has now begun to enter into mainstream life: a Colorado physician is selling a scannable bracelet called Immunaband designed to provide proof of coronavirus vaccination in public.
The wristband, which has been featured by media outlets such as CNN, displays a QR code linked to personal vaccination records. Wearers must upload their vaccination card for review to receive the band, and have the option of adding their name to the bracelet, as well as the type of coronavirus vaccine they received. All bracelets read “COVID Vaccinated.”
The Immunaband website touts the bracelet as “The only secure way to take your vaccine card with you wherever you go,” and a way to “reclaim normalcy” in your life.
READ: Will COVID vaccines really bring us back to normal?
“The real risk of ‘vaccine immunity passports’ is the violation of our rights and freedoms,” Ted Kuntz, president of Vaccine Choice Canada, told LifeSiteNews in an interview earlier this year.
Last year, then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr referred to the idea of digital proof-of-vaccination certificates as a “slippery slope in terms of continuing encroachments on personal liberty.”
Some left-leaning American states and municipalities both in the U.S. and abroad have already begun rolling out various versions of “vaccine passports.” A 100-year-old woman in Chile was denied entry to a supermarket for lack of a digital “health pass,” and New York’s app allows anyone to look up another’s COVID-19 health records using only a first and last name, a date of birth, and a zip code (not even their address, just their zip code).
The Immunaband website states, “Our contribution is to produce a visible outward symbol of the inner immunity you achieve by taking the vaccine.”
“The sleek bracelets are the symbol of vaccination and – hopefully – of society’s eventual triumph over this pandemic. Wear this bracelet to work, to restaurants, and to let people know your commitment to overcoming this disease through your completion of the vaccination series.”
Dr. J. Tashof Bernton, who created the wristband with the inspiration of an idea from his son, designed Immunaband as a way for restaurants “to assure customers that they are in a safe environment that takes Covid-19 seriously,” reported Total Food Service.
The restaurant El Merkury in Philadelphia, as well as restaurants in Los Angeles and Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, are among those that have adopted the bands, CNN reported. The owner of El Merkury, Sofia Deleon, told CNN affiliate WPVI, “It was really important for me to have everybody be vaccinated, to have everyone come back to work and feel safe.”
Coronavirus vaccine trials have never produced evidence that the vaccines stop infection or transmission. They do not even claim to reduce hospitalization, but the measurement of success is in preventing severe symptoms of COVID-19 disease.
As COVID cases have surged in heavily vaccinated countries like Israel, the U.K. and the US, including among vaccinated individuals, hopes that vaccination would prevent infection or halt transmission have dwindled.
On April 30, in the wake of more than 10,000 reports of positive COVID cases among the fully vaccinated in the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced it would cease counting “breakthrough cases” unless the person is hospitalized or dies, leaving uncounted tens of thousands of vaccinated individuals transmitting virus as though they were not infected.
By August, the failure of vaccines to prevent spread of the virus that causes COVID-19 was clear when CDC director Rochelle Walensky reversed the agency’s mask guidance and told vaccinated individuals to keep wearing face coverings.
“Our vaccines are working exceptionally well. They continue to work well with delta with regard to severe illness and death,” Walensky told CNN. “But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission.”
If the vaccine is unable to prevent infection or spread, the merits of a vaccine passport – or digital ID-based bracelet – become increasingly untenable, as the vaccinated are just as likely to pass viruses from each other as to the unvaccinated.
The requirement of a vaccine to prevent serious disease for those who are not at risk to begin with – the CDC reports an infection survival rate of greater than 99.95% for those under age 50—adds to the skepticism about digital vaccine IDs and bracelets. As the list of FDA-recognized adverse events have grown from severe anaphylactic reactions to include fatal thrombotic events, the inflammatory heart condition myocarditis, and neurologically disabling disease like Guillain Barré Syndrome, and adverse event reports to government include more than 12,000 recorded deaths and more than 16,000 permanent disabilities, the requirement of a vaccine identification in the name of public safety strikes a growing number of “vaccine hesitant “ skeptics as patently absurd.
LifeSiteNews has produced an extensive COVID-19 vaccines resources page. View it here.
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