Who Saw This Coming? Online Black Market Expands for COVID-19 Vaccine Passports
Anyone could have seen this coming for miles. The advocates and opponents of vaccine verification are getting louder, so The Associate Press delved deeper into the growing Black Market industry of vaccine passports.
As the delta variant of the coronavirus sweeps across the United States, a growing number of colleges and universities are requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination for students to attend in-person classes. But the mandatory requirement has opened the door for those opposed to getting the vaccine to cheat the system, according to interviews with students, education and law enforcement officials.
Both faculty and students at dozens of schools interviewed by The Associated Press say they are concerned about how easy it is to get fake vaccine cards.
Duh. I mentioned this market back in May. Doesn’t take much time or even any skill, since unlike drivers licenses and passports, there are no security protocols to overcome.
And this is proving my colleague Nick Arama‘s point that these diktats bring suffering to the very people the Left claims to champion: vulnerable young people, the poor, the disenfranchised, and people of color.
Across the internet, a cottage industry has sprung up to accommodate people who say they won’t get vaccinated for either personal or religious reasons.
Also medical reasons, but the anti-science vaccine pushers only believe the ScIEnCE! that their “experts” want to push.
Olivia Sandor went on Fox News’ Hannity in July, and shared her story of being rejected by Brigham Young University Hawaii, despite having a legitimate medical exemption:
Incoming college freshman Olivia Sandor was denied admission into her dream institution, BYU Hawaii, after requesting to be exempt from taking the COVID-19 vaccine due to her high-risk medical history.
Sandor, whose doctor reportedly wrote an exemption letter — made public by Turning Point USA — on her behalf, shared her story on “Hannity” Monday. She explained how, after being given a vaccine back in 2019, she was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome – which left her paralyzed from the waist down for more than a month.
After receiving word that BYU would be requiring all students to be vaccinated, Sandor’s team of medical providers advised her against being injected with the non-FDA-approved coronavirus vaccine and wrote her a letter of exemption.
“I do not want to relapse and have another episode of Guillain-Barre,” she said. “It’s really, truly not worth it to me.”
BYU denied her admission to the school, despite $200,000 in scholarship money already gifted to Sandor, blaming the call on state vaccination mandates.
Sadly, they dragged their feet on this decision, so Sandor’s other scholarship offers to other universities were rescinded. All BYU-HI has to offer her is, So sad. Too bad.
So what do administrators and other students expect will happen when these ridiculous restrictions for a virus that 97 percent of young people recover from are implemented? Black Market vaccine verification will be just the tip of the iceberg.
An Instagram account with the username “vaccinationcards” sells laminated COVID-19 vaccination cards for $25 each.
A user on the encrypted messaging app, Telegram, offers “COVID-19 Vaccine Cards Certificates,” for as much as $200 apiece. “This is our own way of saving as many people as we possibly can from the poisonous vaccine,” reads the seller’s message, viewed by at least 11,000 app users.
An increasing number of inquiries to these sites and similar ones appear to be from those who are trying to get fake vaccination cards for college.
A Reddit user commented on a thread about falsifying COVID-19 vaccination cards, saying, in part, “I need one, too, for college. I refuse to be a guinea pig.”
Therein lies the rub. Even if these learning institutions were consistent in accepting medical exemptions, why should people willingly give themselves over to what is essentially an experiment? Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson are free from liability. Will the educational institution accept blame if a male student contracts myocarditis? Or if someone like Sandor, who has a legitimate and horrific reaction to certain vaccinations, becomes permanently paralyzed? Will the institution cover medical expenses and care for life?
Are any college students or their parents even bothering to ask these questions? There are at least 115 million people in our nation who don’t wish to be vaccinated because of personal, medical or religious reasons; yet, we are holding these people accountable for a variant that the glorified vaccinated are not only contracting, but spreading.
How does this make sense? And why do you think people who are willing to follow the rules under normal circumstances, are now choosing to pay for a fake verification?
According to a tally by The Chronicle of Higher Education, at least 664 colleges and universities now require proof of COVID-19 inoculations. The process to confirm vaccination at many schools can be as simple as uploading a picture of the vaccine card to the student’s portal.
In Nashville, Vanderbilt University places a hold on a student’s course registration until their vaccine record has been verified unless they have an approved medical accommodation or religious exemption.
The University of Michigan says it has a system in place to confirm employee and student vaccinations. A spokesman for the college told the AP the school has not encountered any problems so far with students forging their COVID-19 vaccination record cards.
But Benjamin Mason Meier, a global health policy professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, questions how institutions can verify those records.
“The United States, unlike most countries which have electronic systems in place, is basing its vaccination on a flimsy paper card,” he said.
In a peek at the Twitter feed of AP’s expert voice, we get an idea which side of the argument Meier is on. As if his dig at the U.S. medical system wasn’t a clue.
Along with the retweets on his feed about climate change being “widespread, rampant, & intensifying” (Gee, sounds exactly how they talk about COVID!), Meier is a clear disciple for vaccine mandates and makes that plain in his expert opinion.
Meier tweeted last week that he spoke with several students who were worried about the accessibility of fraudulent vaccine cards and that they knew a fellow student who had submitted one to the university.
“There needs to be policies in place for accountability to make sure that every student is operating in the collective interest of the entire campus,” he said.
Isn’t this the same argument that Georgia, Texas, and other states are making to pass their voter integrity laws?
Hmm…
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