MO Gov. Parson: We’re ‘Never’ Going to Mandate COVID Vaccine Passport in Missouri

Wednesday on FNC’s “Fox & Friends,” Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) said his state is “never” going to mandate a COVID-19 vaccine passport. This comes as some are pushing for those who have been vaccinated to carry around a passport for travel or entry into events.

Parson questioned if citizens want the federal government to have all of that information in a database to be used on them for whatever reason in the future. He added it is “not government’s place” to mandate things such as a vaccine passport or even masks.

“One, it’s all about the privacy of the individual who received the vaccine, who didn’t. Also … do we really want the federal government to have all that information in its database to be able to use it for whatever reason they might want to use it as time goes forward?” Parson emphasized. “And I think the other thing is, we have been in the vaccination business for four months actually with COVID-19. This whole process for over a year now has had so many unknowns in it, so many people that were experts that really turned out not to be so experts, and all the things we have heard from this. So, who knows where this vaccine is going to go? I’m not sure what the end result of this is going to be yet on what it does. So, I think it’s way premature.”

He continued, “We are never going to do that in the state of Missouri. We are never going to have a mandate, a passport, a vaccine passport in this state. You know, if people want to carry a card … that’s fine. That’s called freedom. It’s called individual rights, but it’s not government’s place to do that. And so, you know, we didn’t do the mask mandate here in this state. We didn’t shut businesses down. You know, and all those steps that we did … we are now in the top 10 in the United States in our economy. We’re in the top 10 on our unemployment rates. We are second in the nation on second doses in this state by not doing mandates. So, I think everybody just jumps a knee-jerk reaction when they think you have got to mandate the American people to do something, and that’s not who we are.”

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