SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES
Dori: Fake vax cards or hiding HIV transmission, which is worse for state lawmakers?
Jan 28, 2022, 5:48 AM
Blank COVID-19 vaccination cards are stacked at a pop-up clinic in Las Vegas. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
(Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
It’s confusing. Or it’s public health hypocrisy from state lawmakers.
Washington state Sen. Jesse Salomon (D-Shoreline) has introduced a bill in the Legislature that would make it a Class C felony – punishable by up to five years in prison or a $10,000 fine – to sell or transfer fake COVID-19 vaccine cards.
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Salomon says his bill – SB 5667 – is needed for public health reasons. When you go to a restaurant, he argues, you should not have to fear someone exposing you to COVID. In fact, he calls this a “truth in advertising” bill, targeting people who sell phony cards.
Fellow state Sen. Karen Keiser (D-Des Moines), a co-sponsor of the bill, agrees with Salomon.
“If they’re going to argue that people have a right to present fake forged documents in a public health matter that will put other people at risk, that’s a hard leg to stand on in my opinion,” Keiser said.
But here’s the catch: Two years ago, our state Senate passed a law that reduced the penalty for knowingly infecting someone with HIV – the AIDS virus. Under this now current law, if an HIV-positive person who is aware of their condition doesn’t inform their partner — and then knowingly transmits HIV to their partner – the punishment is now a misdemeanor, not the felony it once was.
So who voted to reduce the HIV exposure punishment? Senators Jesse Salomon and Karen Keiser — the co-sponsors of the bill that would make fake vaccine cards a felony.
Does that mean that in the minds of these two — and most Democrats currently serving our state in Olympia – that a forged piece of paper about one virus is a worse crime than knowingly exposing someone to an often-fatal virus (HIV)?
To me, fake COVID-19 vaccine cards are bad – but this hypocrisy proves that many Democratic leaders in our state don’t really care about the true impact on people. Everything they do is about politics, not about what’s best for us.
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