Call to Action in NYS- Oppose Assembly Bill that would eliminate patients’ right to privacy

Please oppose Assembly Bill A279. This bill would force healthcare providers to turn over their adult patients' vaccination records to a State database and eliminate patients' current right to privacy.

The State of New York already has a database for adult vaccination records, but participation is voluntary for both physicians and patients. Currently, physicians can put a patient's information into the database if the patient consents. A physician may only enter the data in the database if they get permission from the patient. This bill will require them to enter the data. This bill takes away the patients right to consent

This bill takes away our right to keep our medical information private. If the state has access to vaccination records, why not other records? Bureaucracies are always seeking to expand their reach and authority. It is only a matter of time before there will be pressure to add other medical information: prescription drugs, HIV status, other STI status, etc. Once we lose the right to medical privacy we will not get it back.

Black New Yorkers have half the Covid-19 vaccination rate as the statewide average for all people. Hispanics are only slightly more vaccinated than blacks. Clearly, a disproportionate and discriminatory enforcement focus will be on these groups. This database will make that discrimination possible.

In the discussion in the Senate Health Committee on the companion bill, Senator Hoylman had little more to say than, "We need this because of Covid," without explaining how this bill will make the Covid situation any better. More than half of the adults in New York have received at least one Covid shot. Some of those records are in the database already, but most probably aren't. How useful is an incomplete database? And if we need for Covid purposes why collect the data on all other vaccines?

And what about adults who have already had Covid and recovered? That status will not be recorded in the database, and there is growing evidence that vaccinating people with a Covid vaccine who have already had Covid have a much higher rate of serious adverse reactions. But recovered people probably have more robust immunity to Covid than vaccinated people. That is yet another aspect of Covid that is insufficiently studied. But law and policy are being made as if all those questions are known.

We currently have the exact same type of database for school children. It is used to monitor whether children are current with the vaccine schedule and, if not, to coerce their parents to get them up-to-date, and if the parents do not comply then the child loses their right to an education.

This is a tool for surveillance, enforcement and punishment.

The adult database will be used for the same purpose. It will be used too surveil all adults, track their vaccine status, coerce those who are out of compliance, and eventually punish those who do not obey.

A database of this kind will be necessary to enforce any system of vaccine passports, such as the current Excelsior Pass. Vaccine passports are systems of medical apartheid or segregation, but these can only work if there is a database like this bill would create. It is telling that the list of states that have resumed normal life is growing, but here in New York we are implementing invasive systems to allow more isolation, control and segregation.

Oppose A279! (from Autism Action Network)