Francis S. Collins, the director of the United States government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH), went full-on authoritarian in his Sunday interview with Jake Tapper at CNN’s State of the Nation. Collins, in the interview, supported in short succession the imposing of several extreme violations of the freedom of people who have chosen not to take experimental coronavirus vaccines — some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term.
Use vaccine passports to prevent these individuals from attending public events and entering businesses, fire them from their jobs, and bar them from traveling, Collins championed.
Here is the portion of the interview from the show’s transcript in which Collins made the comments:
TAPPER: Some businesses are going a step further and beginning to require proof of vaccinations not just for employees, but even for customers in some cases.
Audience members for Broadway plays and musicals will need to be vaccinated. Some bars in San Francisco and D.C. are requiring proof of vaccinations.
Do you think, as a public health measure, it would be good for more businesses to require vaccine credentials in order to have vaccinated customers?
F. COLLINS: As a public health person who wants to see this pandemic end, yes.
I think anything we can do to encourage reluctant folks to get vaccinated because they will want to be part of these public events, that’s a good thing. I’m delighted to see employers like Disney and Walmart coming out and asking their staff now to be vaccinated. I’m glad to see the president has said all federal employees — I oversee NIH with 45,000 people — need to also get vaccinated, or, if they’re not, to get regular testing, which is inconvenient. All of those steps I think are in the right direction. But I think maybe that’s what it will take for some of those who have still been a little reluctant to say, OK, it’s time. The data will support that decision.
TAPPER: Yes.
F. COLLINS: They are making the right choice for their own safety, but, sometimes, it takes a nudge.
TAPPER: Should airlines require that all fliers who are eligible to be vaccinated be vaccinated before boarding their planes?
F. COLLINS: I think that’s up to the airlines.
I do think a case could be made for that. And that would be another incentive for some of those who are reluctant. And people wouldn’t be surprised, I think, to see that start to happen. So, if you’re thinking about international travel and you’re not yet vaccinated, it might be time to go ahead and get started.
Decades back, Americans would hear similar authoritarian comments expressed by politicians and bureaucrats in the Soviet Union, and Americans would shake their heads in disgust. That could never happen here, many Americans would assure themselves.
Now it is one of the top bureaucrats in America expressing the same sort of authoritarian agenda and detailing how it is being implemented with the help of compliant companies. And, like in the old Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, American big media is cheering on the move. Welcome to the USSA.
