Steve's Blog

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana

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Today’s lesson about not learning the lessons of the past and thus being condemned to repeat them comes courtesy of Illinois State Representative Bob Morgan.

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Bob has introduced a bill in the House (H.B. 4244), the synopsis of which says in part:

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Amends the Immunization Data Registry Act. Provides that health care providers, physician’s designees, or pharmacist’s designees shall (rather than may) provide immunization data to be entered into the immunization data registry. (Emphasis mine)

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The Data Registry Act allows disclosure of immunization data under certain limited circumstances, among them:

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Data in the immunization registry may be used only for the following purposes:

…..(6) To accomplish other public health purposes as determined by the Department.

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It’s this particular provision that troubles me. The Pritzker administration has not hesitated to issue ever more stringent mandates every time there’s a variant in the COVID virus, even though each variation has proven to be less deadly than the last. I fear that if this bill passes, his administration will propose agency rules that broaden those “public health purposes” to the point where there’ll be no limits on those purposes at all. Everything will be fair game.

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The bill provides that one may request exemption from such reporting by filling out a “written immunization data exemption form”, which no doubt will also be entered into the registry, thus marking the person requesting exemption as a member of a suspect category by those who make such decisions.

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And of course it won’t end with COVID, because like the virus that caused the 1918 Spanish flu, COVID is becoming endemic and thus these rules will long outlive the hysteria that surrounds this virus. And who’s to say how those rules will be used in the future, against what perceived emergency, and against whom? Because, like the virus, once they’re in place, they never go away. This will become just another wrench in government’s toolbox allowing it to intrude upon our liberty.

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History is replete with examples of government segregating people on the basis of characteristics over which they have no control. And history is also replete with examples of government segregating people in order to further its own ends. This bill takes a large step toward blurring the distinction between those two statements.