Lithuania's Opportunity Pass

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. We're gonna take a little trip today to the country of Lithuania.

I wanna just read for you an article that was sent to me, and this is story time,

I guess. This is like a 16 -minute read, it says on the top. And maybe I'll make some comments as we go, but this could be the future for us.

And I think it's good to know what's happening in other places around the world right now.

So the COVID pass in Lithuania and throughout

Europe. The COVID pass in Lithuania and throughout Europe. How recent vaccine mandate laws have upended my family's life.

So like I said, 16 -minute read came out September 18th, and I'm gonna read it to you.

I want to share the situation which my family and I are now facing because of COVID pass restrictions.

We live in the small European country of Lithuania. In the last few months, strict COVID pass restrictions have been introduced, which represent a fundamental transformation in society.

There's a picture there for those listening of someone, I guess, scanning or showing their COVID pass to get in somewhere.

In this article, I'll describe the details of how the COVID pass works in my country and how it affects my family. As a start, we're banned from shopping centers, non -essential stores and restaurants.

And my wife and I were both suspended from our jobs without pay. But as I'll explain, it's not just Lithuania.

COVID pass restrictions are being imposed throughout Europe. By my count, at least 14 European countries now have different types of domestic restrictions based on the

COVID pass. And every country has travel restrictions within Europe based on the COVID pass.

There hasn't been much reporting in English language media about what has happened, and so I thought a detailed firsthand account would be useful.

My family, my country. And beautiful castle, by the way, here in this picture. This is interesting because there was a lot of talk at first that there is going to be some kind of like Chinese style social credit system imposed on the

United States as a result of a COVID pass, something like this, or a vaccine passport, and that it would be your key to participating in the market at all.

And it looks like Lithuania and many other European countries perhaps have gone a lot farther in implementing this kind of thing.

And you could think of all the benefits to it, right? I mean, you can keep sick people out, but look, this could also have the potential of you can have all your money in that one place, and it could be encrypted and protected, and you could find criminals more easily.

You can track the movement of people so easily. I mean, we already have cameras to do that, but my goodness, if they have to log in with a pass everywhere they go, it's way better than trying to even search a credit card history.

In fact, let's not even use cash. Let's come up with a digital currency, right? All these things have been, and what the 5G connectivity, you can do it anywhere.

All these things have been attached to this idea of if we just get our foot in the door with this

COVID passport thing, then we can get all that other stuff. Lithuania is a small

European Union country of 2 .8 million people located on the Baltic Sea, bordering Poland, Belarus, Russia, and Latvia.

Currently, 69 % of the population over age 12 are COVID vaccinated. My wife and I have two children.

She is pregnant with our third child. Neither my wife nor I are COVID vaccinated. The Opportunity Pass.

Lithuania introduced a COVID pass for domestic use at the end of May, 2021.

It's called the Opportunity Pass. Doesn't that sound nice? Just like, I don't know, the Patriot Act or something like that.

It's, you know, you can't be against, you're against opportunity. That's the Opportunity Pass. It's for all citizens and foreign residents 16 and over.

The Opportunity Pass allows you the opportunity to participate in society. Without it, you don't have the opportunity.

Your rights are restricted. You can get the Opportunity Pass in three ways. If you're vaccinated with Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, J &J, or a negative

PCR test, valid for 48 hours after the sample is collected. Proof of having had

COVID in the last seven months, you must have had a positive PCR or antigen test result confirmed at the time by your family doctor and entered into your official medical records.

In the middle of August, our country added a fourth way to get the Opportunity Pass, a sufficient level of antibodies based on seriological immunosy, immunosy for COVID -19

IgG antibodies or total antibodies test, valid for 60 days after a test. The Opportunity Pass is a link to your medical records in the national health system, all of which is organized under your national

ID number. The government app has an illustration showing the fun you'll have participating in the opportunities of society if you have the

Opportunity Pass. I'm trying to think of what to even call this. Civil slavery is the best

I can come up with. This is civil slavery on a certain level. Cultures develop organically. The cuisine, the music, all of that stuff, the things you value, the traditions, they come from a people interacting in a free way with each other.

Public trust built over time. This is the kind of thing that kills all that. I think we saw in the Soviet Union how, you know, look at the architecture there.

Look, the people kind of lost their incentive to be creative, to participate in culture, in real ways.

This is the kind of thing, this feels, this is like 1984. It feels close to that. In order to participate in anything social, then you have to have the government stamp of approval first.

And without that, you don't have any access. So people aren't free to just interact with each other.

They have to go through this barrier first. And that barrier has now,

I mean, that barrier can, right now, it's just about health or, you know, COVID. But that, what

I'm saying is that you're building all the machinery that can easily be used to stifle anything that the central authority doesn't want said or portrayed.

And I think this, if this is unchecked, it just is gonna lead to, you're not going to have, it's gonna be like the

Soviet Union in a way, except much more technologically advanced and able to control the flow of people and where they go and all of that.

So let's keep going with this. Restrictions for people without the opportunity pass. A law was passed on August 16th authorizing increased restrictions.

Some of the restrictions include, you cannot visit any cafes or restaurants. You cannot enter any non -essential stores.

You cannot enter any shopping centers or large stores. You cannot receive beauty services, hails and nails, salon.

You cannot use repair services, which lasts longer than 15 minutes. You cannot enter public indoor spaces. You cannot enter a fitness center, gym or sauna.

You cannot enter outdoor events, which have more than 500 people. You cannot sit and read in libraries. You may not use the library to pick up and return books.

You cannot travel by train. You cannot enter banks or insurance agencies unless the purpose is for pensions or social benefits and no more than 15 minutes.

Students cannot enter university without the pass. One cannot visit patients in medical facilities or senior care residential homes.

Only one exception, terminally ill patients and children under 14 years of age. And if the doctor gives you an advanced permission regarding medical care, you may receive emergency care without the opportunity pass for scheduled inpatient medical care.

You must have the COVID pass or COVID certificate for outpatient services. The medical care must be conducted in a safe environment and will require testing depending on the epidemiological situation.

This is almost everything. I mean, this is such control. There are many more rules with lots of convoluted and sometimes conflicting provisions.

And it's even more confusing because bureaucrats revise the rules almost daily. Here's how it currently works in practice if you don't have the opportunity pass.

For shopping, you're only allowed to shop in small stores which have street entrances and whose main activity is to sell food.

Pharmaceuticals, glasses and contact lenses or farming supplies. You may not enter stores which mainly sell any other products.

You may not enter any shopping mall. You may not enter large stores, including supermarkets. For eating and drinking, you cannot visit any restaurant or cafe or bar.

This includes all indoor areas and most outdoor areas. For transportation, local city buses do not require the opportunity pass, but political leaders have indicated all forms of public transportation might require the pass if they can figure out how to make it workable on busy buses and trains.

For medical care, inpatient services require the COVID pass. For outpatient medical care, medical facilities may allow a patient to enter who does not have the opportunity pass.

But in practice, many clinics require the opportunity pass except for emergency situations.

In my area, outpatient medical facilities require the COVID pass or certification. Several days ago, my family was turned away from a medical facility because we did not have the

COVID pass. The medical facility offered us the option to come back if we returned with a negative

PCR test. In a separate incident a few days later, we went to the dental office we've attended for years for an appointment for one of my children, but we were asked to leave when the staff discovered

I don't have the opportunity pass. How does it look like for work? For work, employees may mandate the employees have the opportunity pass.

Each company and industry is setting its own standard. In the case of my wife and myself, we work in different industries and have different occupations, but both our employers have separately created the same policy.

People without the opportunity pass won't actually be fired because that would create many legal issues, obligations, and unemployment benefits.

Instead, employees are suspended without pay. By the way, something similar has happened here in New York State with nurses and medical workers who don't wanna get the jab.

They, basically it's a tug of war. To try to get the hospital or clinic to fire you is difficult.

They will basically consider if you, that you have quit yourself, that you are, that you're quitting if you don't get it.

They're trying to put it all on you and you do not qualify for unemployment.

Using the opportunity pass. The COVID pass is in the form of a QR code. To use the opportunity pass, you should show the

QR to a verifier, a guard, or the verifier scans your code.

The scanner confirms that the pass is authentic, verifies your safe health status, makes sure the

IDs match. There's pictures of it here of it happening. Those who don't use smartphones may go to the government office or pharmacy to get a paper printout of the

QR code. The rules must be enforced by all private and public entities which are affected. So that's restaurants, stores, all of that.

And then there's some pictures here of how it looks like, how it looks in practice. People just standing there, ready to scan your code if you go anywhere.

Large shopping centers, scanning. Some of them have code scanners there. So probably won't let the door open unless you have it or something.

It's crazy. And I think the elites of the world probably think this is wonderful.

At stores with police, workers handled the complaints. A representative for a major supermarket chain commented there have been conflicts because some people aren't happy with the new rules.

Workers check the passes, find it psychologically difficult to deal with all that negativity. Yeah, I'm sure they do. Restaurants, cafes, and bars.

We already kind of read about this, but he says, using a scanning app, the inspectors went from person to person to verify that everyone in the restaurant, customers and staff, had a valid opportunity pass and matching

ID. I guess that's an experience he had. So this is a local restaurant owner.

He's telling him this. So you might even be sitting there and they'll come through like on a train and they'll scan again.

Outdoor seats, indoor toilets. Oh man, that could be a problem, right? So let's see here.

I guess this is just making the point that people without the COVID pass are required to move directly to the bathroom without stopping at any other place indoors and must properly wear face masks during the toilet trip.

It's a moot point anyway, because the weather has become too cold for most people to sit inside. So saying that this is, if you have to go to the bathroom, there's sort of this little exception,

I guess, but it's barely an exception. Coercion to vaccinate. The government contends that vaccine is not mandatory.

Right, this is the whole thing. Oh, it's not mandatory, but we're gonna use our power and we'll use the corporations that we're in bed with to basically make this.

Effectively, it is mandated. I'm sorry, it is coerced. It's a fig leaf to mask the pressure to vaccinate.

Our government pays lip service to immunity from prior infection, but in practice makes it difficult to use it on the basis.

All right, so what I just said. You have to do a test every one to two days in order to live your life freely, every 48 hours.

Only PCR tests allowed. Our government mandated that only a PCR test is acceptable to get the pass rather than the cheaper rapid antigen test.

Government leaders explicitly created this requirement in order to increase the burden of testing. And let's see, and tests cost money.

Lab fees, it costs a lot of money. So there's a burden of time, there's a burden of money.

Our freedom has become conditional on vaccination or daily testing. So he's saying why they didn't get the pass.

Let's see. Why they oppose it. We oppose the pass out of principle and they do have diseases that this could contribute to.

And she's also pregnant. But in general, government is opposed to the medical exemptions.

So the politics. When COVID vaccines began in December, 2020, political leaders in Lithuania emphasize that vaccination was voluntary.

As vaccination rates increased, development began on the COVID pass, mainstream political views changed.

Here are some quotes from leaders in the past two months. People who do not get vaccinated are a threat to our health, to our country's economy, to business and to human life.

I urge you to avoid associating with the unvaccinated. Wow. Because associating with the deliberately unvaccinated is the same as getting into a car with a drunk driver.

If you don't get vaccinated, then go prepare your grave. The opportunity pass will allow us to live as freely as can possibly be during a global pandemic.

The opportunity pass is the only way to not shut down the economy. Really China figured out a way to do that, right?

With growing their economy during this time. Do not vaccinate yourself means that you will spread it because anyone who does not vaccinate is a potential spreader.

Not vaccinating yourself and encouraging others to not vaccinate are not yet crimes. Not yet. We are still gentle and polite, but therefore we suffer because we do not stop the unvaccinated with the force of law and order.

However, it can be done. We are at war. Let us reflect among ourselves and the coalition government on whether the state is really doing everything it can to fight the virus that is the anti -vaxxers.

That's the virus. It's the anti -vaxxers of the virus. Are you, are you waking up yet?

Are you seeing the writing on the wall? Some of these statements aren't much different than things being said here in the United States. You are, you wanna talk about marginalized?

And the social justice movement isn't gonna come for you. Nope, they're not going to see you as marginalized before your beliefs are persecuted or anything like that.

You are the problem. You are still going to be the oppressor because you're oppressing everyone else because you're, you're making them sick or something like that.

That's how this works. Um, let's see here.

The economics minister visited cafes and bars to promote the opportunity pass. She wrote on her

Facebook page. Oh man, I'm not even gonna read this quote. Let's keep going here.

The number of positive tests results in Lithuania has risen sharply in the last month. Isn't that interesting? The pattern this year is the same as 2020.

The number of new positive tests reaching low with the peak of summer heat and early. So basically it's not, it's not doing anything.

All of this, and it's still, still you are increasing in the cases are increasing.

Okay, from August to September, 172 people died of COVID. August 27th to September 15th.

Of them, 35 or 20 % were fully vaccinated. The other 80 % were either unvaccinated or partially vaccinated. The data does not show the breakdown.

The fight, let's see, under the revaccination program, people will get a third injection. So they're already under their third.

The president said compulsory or forced vaccination is the sole possibility if we want a smooth process. So they're talking about enforcing these things.

They're talking about forcing these things. They're talking about fourth and fifth booster shots.

The vice minister of health, that's great. Our government is drafting a law to deny sickness benefits to people who have not been vaccinated.

Attempts to circumvent the pass. So there's some people have tried to circumvent this. Because of long queues of people waiting to enter stores, guards only infrequently verify.

So non -pass holders have taken advantage by borrowing QR codes of other people. They're using other people's

QR codes. Stuff like that is happening. Let's see here. So someone got in trouble for doing that.

The police offered, I should have press release. In our country, opinion polls show that 70 to 80 % of people support vaccine mandates and the exclusion of unvaccinated people from various aspects of society.

There is no unified opposition to restrictions. Opposition is usually ignored by the mainstream.

And when mentioned, those who oppose mandates are character by both the government and the media as far right, anti -LGBT, conspiracy theorists, and neo -Nazis.

Does that sound familiar to anyone? So if you don't want to get the jab, you're a

Nazi. You're a horrible person. Social stigmatization.

Opponents of vaccine mandates are muted with the label of anti -vaxxer. So basically, which is like being fatalistic, irrational, mystical, illiterate, selfish, anti -modern, and anti -science.

So they're trying to basically, that's what they want to. That's the broad brush.

You're a loony, you're anti -LGBT, anti -Semitic, all that kind of stuff. There is not much protest in our country against the vaccine mandates.

In France and Holland, there have been large demonstrations by diverse groups, not enough to stop the restrictions, but at least something. But in our country, protests have been small, dominated by anti -LGBT activists, and limited in many ways by government restrictions and police.

We're not unusual among European countries in the apathy and lack of protest of the broad population.

In the last 18 months, it's been rare most of Europe to see massive broad -based opposition to COVID measures.

That surprised me very much. It's staggering to me that large numbers of people in my country and throughout Europe don't care, seem to care much about individual rights and liberty.

The contrast with recent history is stark. In my country, we were occupied for decades by the Soviet Union. We fought for and won a revolution of independence 30 years ago.

Hundreds of thousands of people took real risks to oppose the oppressive communist regime. In the most famous incident in August, 1989, 30 % of the entire population of the

Baltic States, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, joined hands to form a human chain of 675 kilometers in support of freedom and independence from the authoritarian

Soviet occupation. What happened?

Three decades later, our current population is apathetic about losing freedoms, which the previous generation fought for.

Prime Minister of fellow Baltic States of Estonia warned in June, what we have seen in this

COVID crisis, this urge for a strong hand or an authoritarian way of governing is deep in our societies, even in some countries you would never believe.

We battled against the government -led propaganda and the show -me -your -documents authoritarianism of the USSR, only now to acquiesce meekly to a new regime of media -led propaganda and technocratic fear -driven health authoritarianism of show -me -your -COVID

QR code. And self -censorship. This is why it's like the Chinese system more.

Self -censorship. Opposition to the COVID pass isn't treated here as a political or philosophical view, which people can disagree about.

Instead, it's considered to be an opinion so dangerous it must be banned. Under the Soviet occupation from 94 to 90, political dissent was suppressed, news was censored, and neighbors spied on neighbors.

Yet now we've returned to a regime of censorship. It's encouraged by the government, but at least so far, it's not directed and enforced by them.

Let's see here. Let's see. 18 months into the crisis, people now are more afraid of the social stigma than of the virus itself.

And I can say the same thing. The United States, that's what's happening in many places. Public shaming and death wishes.

On Facebook, many Lithuanians I've seen post a sticker on their profile, educated vaccinated. Together with long posts, raging we would be finished with this pandemic if only the stupid anti -vaxxers would either get vaccinated or die.

We've entered into a world where you have to whisper to talk about your opposition to government policies. And then what to do.

My wife and I don't know what to do, he says. We've never been involved or interested in politics. We don't like to fight and we don't want publicity.

We like our privacy, but they can't talk to officials. He's tried. They won't meet with us because we're not vaccinated.

There's no legal options. We have no chance in courts. If we sue, the judges in our country support the mandates. Constant tests to maintain freedom.

We can't afford to do PCR tests every one to two days. My wife and I earn about, well, not enough to make it.

Let's see. We've thought about moving to countries somewhat less restricted, but it would be difficult.

There aren't many countries to choose from. They both speak English, but they don't have visas for the

United States. The United States, that's the place they're looking at. Oh, maybe we can move there. Be a huge change for our children.

It's, I mean, this is just devastating. We don't wanna move. We don't wanna leave. We have a home here.

We definitely, one of the most restrictive countries in Europe right now. We're not the only ones though to have the COVID pass.

And he goes through some more. Austria, Cyprus, France, Italy, Portugal all have versions of this.

And he's saying basically, please get the word out. Please get the word out about what's happening here.

I think the attention from abroad can have a positive impact. If the COVID pass is allowed to continue, the problems will be fixed.

Bureaucracy will grow and become entrenched, and this regime will be normalized and accepted. Lithuania is the harbinger of the future facing every nation.

If we continue going down this path, and please forward this message. So, and there's references here to different things.

So, and an email address, if you wanna contact this person. This is, I don't even know, txti .es.

I'm not sure what website this is. This was sent to me though by someone in, I believe

Germany, it was in Europe, sent this to me. And I just, I wanna say that this is terribly frightening for people living in the

West and in the United States in particular, I think. Well, I mean, it's maybe not as much in the

United States because we don't have this level yet, but in some of the blue states in the United States, they wanna go the same direction.

And for people who love freedom and love, and know what this means, this is scary.

And so what do we do in times like this? Well, obviously prayer is a big thing. We need to pray. We need to support those who are willing to risk it all and whistleblow, like those with Project Veritas who have been whistleblowing.

And we need to, in our local, again, localism. Get involved on local level. Politics is all local.

If your local politicians, your local leaders don't support this kind of thing, if they will hedge against it.

Now, I'll give you an example. Where I lived in Virginia, at the height of everything happening last year,

I knew the places I could go eat and there would be no restrictions. They were just disregarding. Romans 13,

Romans 13. Yeah, and that's unfortunately this horrible view of Romans 13 that you just give the government a blank check is crippling us.

Because the businesses that didn't shut down did so on the basis of there's no law, number one, telling us this is just the governor's edict.

He doesn't have the authority to make this edict. Furthermore, I have to feed my family.

I have to be able to make a living. And when the government becomes so tyrannical to the point that you can't even do the basic things that you're required by God to do, then to feed your family, then you've got a real problem there.

And who are you gonna obey in that situation? It's, we have to be able to enact a doctrine or appeal to the doctrine of the lesser magistrate in the area that I live.

The police weren't enforcing it. And that's something, and unfortunately, if we get a federal police force or something like that,

I mean, it's all over. We have got to hold the line in our local communities. I think that's the main thing.

So pray, hold the line in your local communities. Don't let this stuff, even if it's a directive from Washington or from the capital of the state, make sure the local people in your community are going to fight this kind of thing.