Europe is opening back up as long as you can show that you've been vaccinated against COVID-19:
The European Union agreed on Wednesday to reopen its borders to visitors who have been fully vaccinated with an approved shot....The bloc will accept visitors who have received full immunization using one of the shots approved by its own regulator or by the World Health Organization. That covers the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Sinopharm vaccines. This would open the door to Americans, who have been receiving shots from Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.
All that's left is to come up with some way to prove that you've been vaccinated. But what could it be? You already need a passport to travel abroad, so I suppose it would be something like that: a "passport," but one that shows your vaccination status. Sort of a "vaccine passport," if you will. Someone ought to get to work on that.
NYS has the excelsior pass. Works great, only thing is you have to show your ID along with the pass. I figure they will add a picture soon.
I'm trying to reconcile this obsession with documentation with, you know, all the concern for the 'undocumented'.
I don’t see any inconsistency. The objective here is not to related to our ongoing culture wars but rather is to protect society as a whole from a deadly pandemic. Just as we’ve intelligently made it possible for those who are sans-papiers to receive the vaccine, it is obviously sensible to allow them access to the vaccine passports to established their vaccinated status.
When the documentation is needed to remain healthy, safe and productive, like immigrants from violent and/or desperately impoverished countries seek, it is morally questionable to impose it as a requirement.
When the documentation is needed to do something totally discretionary, like vacationing in Europe, it becomes much more morally acceptable to impose it as a requirement.
See the difference there?
The concern with the undocumented is to give them legal papers. Like DACA. Comprende?
I don't know, maybe they are different things fitting different needs. I wouldn't spend a lot of thought on it unless it feeds into some need of yours.
I don't see how Europe can get away with this. Governor DeSantis and Governor Abbott have made it illegal.
>chuckle<
Abbott & de Santis are the Dag Hammarskjold & U Thant of our time.
The vaccine passport has been around for decades. It's called the International Certificate of Vaccination and Prophylaxis, it's yellow, and it's intended to record all your vaccinations, not just the covid vaccine.
I grew up with that, being at school in India and going to Sri Lanka where my parents worked twice a year. On subsequent travels on four continents it was almost as important as my passport. You wanted to go somewhere, you checked if you needed a visa and what shots were required. I remember being at the Iranian border with an inexperienced Italian who didn't have any vaccine carnet. The Iranians were nice about it: they gave him one when he agreed to take the shots. But it wasn't so at all borders.
No-one over the age of fifty or sixty with traveling experience will be shocked by vaccine passports. They were a part of life and not a nuisance at all.
“No-one over the age of fifty or sixty with traveling experience will be shocked by vaccine passports.”
First off, this is America in the Year of our Lord 2021. I guarantee you there will be people of all ages shocked by anything the Biden Administration or foreign governments impose on travellers. A lady on my plane the other day was shocked that TSA forced her to empty her water bottle and take off her shoes, despite both being part of the screening process for the last decade-plus.
But secondly, many of our fellow senior Americans never travelled abroad in the days of vaccine passports (under that or any other name). Americans are pretty insular, with a majority never acquiring a passport ever in their lives. So I wouldn’t count on many older Americans remembering the days when vaccine passports used to be common.
🤣
So, Kevin, you and your SWMBO may be traveling to France after all?
for international travel, maybe a passport stamp from some agency (tsa, state dept etc) would work.
Spike protein tests. Those won't return a positive with out a vaccine, regular infection immunity will not trigger them.
OR ... you could keep the card they give you when you get your 2nd shot, to prove you've been vaccinated
I was going to say the same. A card that states it was issued by/on behalf of - the CDC isn't enough? How official does it have to be?