England Drops Vaccine Passport Plan

The plan to mandate COVID-19 virus vaccine passports for nightclubs and crowded events in England will not go ahead, UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid announced on Sunday, Sept. 12th.

It comes after British lawmakers across the political spectrum voiced strong opposition to the plans.

Speaking on the BBC’s “The Andrew Marr Show”, the health secretary said he “never liked the idea” of forcing people to show their papers in everyday activities, but the government was right to look at the evidence.

“What I can say is that we’ve looked at it properly and whilst we should keep it in reserve as a potential option, I’m pleased to say that we will not be going ahead with plans for vaccine passports,” Javid said.

The health secretary added that the government shouldn’t be doing things for the sake of it or because others are doing them.   “So many countries, at the time they implemented it, was to try and boost their vaccination rates and you can understand why they might have done that,” he said.

Javid said that England has so far been “very successful” with its vaccination rates, with 55 percent of 16- to 17- year-olds having had their first doses only a month after the jabs were offered to this age group.

Shortly before his announcement on the BBC, the health secretary said the government hadn’t made a final decision on domestic vaccine passports in a separate interview with Sky News. He also said that he wants to get rid of PCR tests for international travel “as soon as [he] possibly can.”

Also on the same day, the UK government said Prime Minister Boris Johnson is expected to repeal  some powers from the Coronavirus Act, so that the government will no longer have the powers to shut down the economy, apply restrictions to events and gatherings, disrupt education, extend time limits for urgent warrants, or detain infectious people.

Nearly 90 percent of the UK population aged over 16 have received the first dose of a CCP virus vaccine, and over 80 percent have received both doses, the government said.

Members Of Congress, Staff & 600,000 Postal Workers Exempt From Biden Vaccine Mandate

Members of Congress, their staff, and federal court system employees are exempt from the Biden administration's new vaccine mandates, according to Newsweek.

On Thursday, Biden issued two executive orders mandating that federal workers, federal contractors, and workers for companies with more than 100 employees take the Covid-19 jab or face unemployment and fines.

While Biden's order applies to employees of the executive branch, the House and Senate are part of the separate legislative branch, and of course the courts are part of the judicial branch - so the new orders don't apply there.

According to the Washington Post, citing a  “White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss not-yet-public portions of the president’s plan", U.S. Postal Service workers were not included in Biden’s executive order requiring all federal employees to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.

The loophole in question, according to the report, according to the White House source, is that the "USPS has a separate statutory scheme and is traditionally independent of federal personnel actions like this" even though postal workers would be strongly encouraged to comply with the mandate.

"Building on the President's announcement in July to strengthen safety requirements for unvaccinated federal workers, the President has signed an Executive Order to take those actions a step further and require all federal executive branch workers to be vaccinated," reads Biden's COVID 'action plan' titled "Path Out of the Pandemic."

"The President also signed an Executive Order directing that this standard be extended to employees of contractors that do business with the federal government," the plan continues. "As part of this effort, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Indian Health Service, and the National Institute of Health will complete implementation of their previously announced vaccination requirements that cover 2.5 million people."

The New York Times reported on the day of Biden’s announcement that the executive order doesn't apply to those who work for Congress or the federal courts, citing White House officials.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said in a press conference on April 29th that the House couldn’t require members to be vaccinated.

"So—so here is the thing. We cannot require someone to be vaccinated. That's just not what we can do. It is a matter of privacy to know who is or who isn't," Pelosi said.

"I can't go to the Capitol Physician and say, 'Give me the names of people who aren't vaccinated, so I can go encourage them or make it known to others to encourage them to be vaccinated.' So we can't—we can't do that," she said. -Newsweek

How's this going to 'protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated' on Capitol Hill?