San Francisco becomes 1st major U.S. city to require proof of full COVID vaccine for patrons at restaurants, cafes, bars, gyms

San Francisco will require residents and visitors to prove that they are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 for a number of indoor activities such as visiting restaurants, bars, and gyms, Mayor London Breed announced Thursday.

The order will require businesses to verify vaccination status prior to entry. This goes into effect on August 20.

Proof of vaccination will be required for all customers and staff. Staff will need to be fully vaccinated by October 13. …

There is also a new proof of vaccination requirement for large events at indoor venues, requiring attendees at events with 1,000 people or more to provide proof of vaccination.

“The health order also extends vaccination requirements to certain health care providers—including workers at adult day centers, residential care facilities, dental offices, home health aides and pharmacists—who are not already required. This goes into effect October 13,” Breed said.

San Francisco is reportedly the first major U.S. city to enforce proof of full vaccination to receive services at indoor businesses. New York City recently began enforcing a similar requirement, but businesses there only need proof of one dose.

If you have a cell phone and were vaccinated in California, the state has a way to access your vaccination card digitally so you don’t need to carry the paper copy. Click here to get your digital COVID-19 vaccine record.

Governments have made all kinds of promises that the data they collect and track will be private and not subject to tracking. But how much can you trust governments that have been caught surveilling and tracking their citizens in other ways, and have been caught lying specifically about this issue?

Even if the intentions of every powerful member of government are pure and good, the track record of governments and even businesses that engage in mass data collection is poor, to say the least.

Not even the Soviet Union was able to track its citizens’ movements in real time. Such a system could be misused in many ways. Once a government builds it, it could use the same infrastructure to track, check and exclude people for any reason. A big red X could show up on the screen of the train conductor, job interviewer, café cashier, banker, school administrator, social worker, police officer or government agent if the person shows up in the government database as unvaccinated, unregistered in some other government scheme, guilty of something the government has declared a crime, involved in a certain political party, possessing membership in a certain religious group, having contacted certain people, having read certain material, or having posted a certain opinion online.

The infrastructure for vaccine passports won’t do all these things, but it will do most of the heavy lifting. And crucially, it will break perhaps the first and biggest barrier of all: citizens’ resistance to surrendering their rights.

“Where Are Vaccine Passports Leading?”, July 2021, Philadelphia Trumpet