Michael Brendan Dougherty takes aim at the idea of issuing "vaccine passports":
Let’s be absolutely clear. Even if you put aside all the privacy and constitutional concerns, vaccine passports do not allow us to reopen the economy faster....Second, we have no way of knowing right now whether such a system really facilitates people “reentering” normal life....Third, even if you could institute such a surveillance system, it would also bar people who — for whatever reason — can’t access the vaccine, not just the anti-vaxxers who deserve punishing.
....One other note. This is absolutely the wrong battle to choose with anti-vaxxers. Trying to institute a kind of medical rider to the Bill of Rights is very likely to fail in courts if tested seriously.
I think the point is being missed here. I agree that vaccine passports won't help us open the economy faster. I also doubt that they will make it easier to "re-enter normal life," whatever that means. And yes, it might cause some problems for people who legitimately can't get vaccinated, though that seems like an easily solved problem.
And yet, I still like the idea. Here's the thing: it's basically a free-market solution to the problem of vaccine free riders. Nobody is forcing anyone to get vaccinated. You're simply being given the option of being able to prove your status in case some private entity asks about it. And private entities are surely entitled to do as they please, right?
That's the conservative approach, anyway. The upshot, of course, is that going unvaccinated will become a huge pain in the ass if stores and restaurants and employers start closing their doors to anyone who doesn't have a vaccine passport, and this will spur even the doubters to get vaccinated. This is roughly the way smallpox was eliminated, though sometimes the methods were considerably rougher than this.
It's also worth noting that this is not some kind of "medical rider" to the Bill of Rights. Over a century ago, a very conservative Supreme Court—the same one that handed down the Lochner decision a year later—ruled that public health was at the core of the state's responsibilities: "Of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members." In other words, vaccines could be mandated by the state. A few years later they confirmed that ruling and added that states could also mandate vaccinations for children before they were allowed to attend public schools. As part of both rulings, they noted that mandatory vaccination did not violate the 14th Amendment.
A vaccine passport is considerably less intrusive than this and surely within the authority of the federal government to issue. After that, it's all up to the private sector as long as state legislatures stay out of the way and allow private entities to do as they wish. Which they should. Right?
An alternative, of course, is to simply mandate vaccinations, something that states clearly have the authority to do. Given Supreme Court precedent on this subject, I'd be all for it. COVID-19 is no joke and it's not just the seasonal flu. It's deadly, it's likely to become endemic, and acquiring herd immunity is going to be hard. It's a real-life emergency, not something that should become a tiresome political football tossed around by people who treat it as a libertarian debating point.¹
But I'm willing to compromise on a vaccine passport instead. This assumes, naturally, that the passport is something that's feasible in the real world. If it's not, then maybe we'll have to go down the mandate path.
¹Though if it is, I guess I'd say that allowing people to remain potential spreaders of a deadly virus is not much different from allowing people to punch you. I'm opposed to both.
Oh this is just so precious.
1. Within a few months I would think that most of the vaccine access issues will be resolved and that anyone who wants one can get vaccinated.
2. It's not a passport, but apparently Dougherty has never heard of the yellow card. I forget its official name, but it's a vaccination log. I had one when I visited Asia some years ago and it listed the vaccinations I had obtained before the trip. It was issued by the travel clinic where I got the shots. IIRC it was not mandatory to have one, but it would help if you got sick while traveling since it was a good record of which vaccinations you'd received.
3. Why should people who got vaccinated -- which I've done -- have their lives limited in the same way as people who choose not to get vaccinated? (I'm setting aside here the issue of people who can't get a Covid vaccine for medical reasons.)
It's officially the "International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis."
But everyone calls it the yellow card.
Available only on Ocean Avenue.
This is completely right, the more important point is the need to vaccinate as many people as fast as possible and this need is an overriding national interest, because otherwise, as everyone has said, it will have room to keep reproducing and mutating until there are so many varieties we can never get ahead of it.
It's all signaling. All of it. If you wish to signal that you're wacko - go for it. If you wish to indicate you're selfish - do it. If you wish show that you are responsible - hallelujah. Even if you're not able to receive protection and world like to indicate that - here's your chance.
Letting assholes hide behind manufactured reasons of cultural shame is the exact opposite of this endeavor. It's exactly like winking when a Klansman sheds his hood.
Person 1 has chronic pain. The Pfizer vaccine caused 74% of people over placebo to receive headaches, joint and or muscle pain.
Person 2 has an inflammatory disease. Scientists including ones associated with the vaccine corporations say it’s likely the vaccines causes non-specific inflammatory responses.
According to the Pfizer study those not getting the vaccine have less than a 1% chance of getting Covid.
Do you think insulting those two people as selfish because they won’t take the drug to benefit yourself is a good argument? Or is that just a signal to show your bonafides for vaccines?
>> According to the Pfizer study those not getting the vaccine have less than a 1% chance of getting Covid.<<
Nearly 10% of Californians have gotten Covid. Where does this 1% number come from?
His/her behind. Oakchairbc is long time antivaxxer since his/her MJ days.
Notice I stipulated that if you aren't safe to take the vaccine, I notated that. In fact, that's why I advocate the passport. Indicate in the passport you're a loon, a vaccinated person, or one that cannot take it. Simple as that.
I have severe chronic pain. I received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine. No headache, no additional pain.
I have an auto-immune disease that causes severe, destructive inflammation. The vaccine had no discernible effect on my inflammation.
More than half a million people have died¹ from COVID-19 in the U.S. and many more have suffered greatly, while some have debilitating long term effects. There are no comparable side effects from being vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine. A small number of people have experienced anaphylaxis, but to the best of my knowledge, no one has died. Unless a competent medical doctor recommends that a person forego being vaccinated, there simply is no justification for not being vaccinated if the opportunity exists.
Person 1 can whine if it makes her feel better, but the odds of having anything significant other than improved resistance to the virus are largely imaginary.
Person 2 can moan and groan about inflammation, but there are better ways of dealing with inflammation than there are in dealing with COVID--19.
Your comment seems to be dressed up in serious medical concerns that don't really exist in the real world.
"Person 1 has chronic pain. The Pfizer vaccine caused 74% of people over placebo to receive headaches, joint and or muscle pain."
Zero died and I've seen nothing to suggest that the effects of the vaccine have been anything but temporary. A day or two in most cases.
"Person 2 has an inflammatory disease. Scientists including ones associated with the vaccine corporations say it’s likely the vaccines causes non-specific inflammatory responses."
Permanent, fatal, or debilitating "non-specific inflammatory responses?"
You've created or exaggerated the negative effects of being vaccinated as a way to excuse what is overwhelmingly irresponsible behavior.
Every medication has side effects, some that cause cancer or kill the occasional patient. If the FDA refused to approve any drug that has potentially dangerous side effects, we'd have trouble treating almost any serious disease. Illness is often about making a choice between risking uncommon but catastrophic side effects (including death) and facing no effective treatment, which leaves the patient in a condition that is very likely unbearable.
¹ The vast majority of those were very likely preventable if all Americans had acted responsibly.
Well said!
Sounds like there's a very good chance your hypothetical people have conditions that would make it very worrisome for them if they contracted covid. So I would tell them to get the vaccine.
DFPaul,
Well said. Sometimes people miss the forest for the trees.
Stop spreading nonsense and false information. Here are the results of the Pfizer vaccine trials.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.fda.gov/media/144245/download&ved=2ahUKEwig5LXkoNfvAhWKu54KHTFVAAkQFjAAegQIAxAC&usg=AOvVaw2R0YHnTpPmI-2rqIODPjOZ
Do you have a citation for pain or inflammation persisting beyond, say, three days post-vaccination? Transitory reactions are just that — they go away.
Plenty of people can’t other childhood vaccines. Their is space in herd immunity for the few that can’t. It’s that choose thst are “free riders” and the clowns that could f up this whole solution. Yes it should be mandated. I would not blame an employer, a merchant or anyone that wanted deny this jackasses anything. Our lives may depend it.
@iam4man
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577
@Trissicsands
If we are going to use the logical fallacy of personal anecdotes from internet posters we can’t pretend we are basing our opinions on science. Furthermore how do you know it had zero effect on inflammation? You had your ill action markets tested before and after? If you didn’t have those tests you are lying. Not even the short term studies done by the vaccine makers; studies which don’t actually test for negative health effects claim there are no negative effects. That would be your second lie. If you bothered to read the Pfizer study you’d recognize that the reported adverse events I listed occurred 7 days post vaccination date.
@ Solar
Anyone who is literate can go to the results section of the Pfizer study and see that .84% of non vaccinated people were recorded as getting Covid. You should try understanding what you post before spouting out ad hominem logical fallacies.
The use of personal anecdotes is not a logical fallacy. It''s only a problem when a personal anecdote is assumed to apply to everyone. All I did was respond to hypothetical cases, which are imaginary, with real world experience.
You assume, wrongly, that I didn't have testing for inflammation both before and after being vaccinated. Result? No adverse effect on inflammation in my case.
"If you didn’t have those tests you are lying." - - oakchairbc
In responding to Solar, you accuse him of ad hominem attacks, but you assume I'm "lying" when you know nothing about what I have or haven't done regarding my own health. Pot meet kettle, you're lookin' mighty black today.
Admittedly, all the debilitating effects of mRNA vaccines are now a worldwide scandal, while the toll of COVID-19 infection has been hugely exaggerated...oh, wait.
There will always be people adversely effected by vaccines and almost any other medical treatment. That is not a reason or an excuse to avoid being vaccinated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus unless a person has specific, verifiable medical reasons to avoid what have been and are undoubted lifesaving vaccines.
You seem like a person who just wants to argue for the sake of arguing. I'll avoid your penchant for ad hominem attacks and simply ignore you from now on. Unless, of course, I just can't help myself.
That said, I patiently await your "scientific" treatise on how the risks of vaccination far outweigh the risks of contracting COVID-19 and how anyone with a vague concern about a medical treatment should avoid it even if it means risking potentially far greater harm. You apparently haven't faced the difficulty of continuing to suffer from a medical condition or opt for a treatment that could have dire consequences including death. That might teach you a lesson. (Ask Kevin how that feels or you could ask me, but you'd undoubtedly just accuse me of lying.)
Social conservatives have little self-control, or, perhaps, sense of self-control, leading to anxiety and hysteria and projected out-of-controlness, and this is why they on the one hand feel most comfortable in authoritarian or hierarchical environments, which takes any option away from them, and why they react with hysteria to wearing masks, because freaking out gives them a seeming option of running amok, their panic sublimated in imaginary virtue.
I'd like to go a step further regarding the safety of our schools.
As it is, kids are required to be vaccinated to enter public school. Until a Covid vaccine is available for school-age children, I think it should be a requirement that all adults in a child's household be vaccinated in order for their child to enter next fall. Once the kids' vaccine is available next year, this rule could be dropped.
This would give responsible parents piece of mind knowing that other parents aren't infecting their classroom.
OK - so the republicans don't ant to have vaccine passports to identify who could kill us or not.
The republicans don't want a public gun registry so we could tell who could kill us or not
But they damned sure want a voter ID so they can restrict the number of black votes counted
Priorities, priorities.......
Yes, indeed.
But we've always known what they'll never admit: that their insistence on "liberty" only applies to ensuring their own unlimited freedom to limit ours.
And it's not just minority groups, but anyone who
Isn't in lockstep with the right.
Get government off our backs - and into our bedrooms! Yes, so many contradictions.
I can’t see any negative consequences in turning a group of people into second class citizens unless they take drugs they perceive as harmful. Nothing can go wrong there.
I don’t see anything morally wrong with forcing people to take drugs. Your body, my choice because it’s good for me sounds like a solid rally cry.
I can’t see any negative consequences in making it so people have to divulge their medical records to private entities. HIPPA and privacy was always a bad idea, let’s keep demolishing those rights. Finish what the Patriot Act started!
What are the odds a republican Supreme Court declares gays and blacks can be discriminated against because perceived dangerousness allows for discrimination?
On the scientific debating points we’d have to mention that there is zero mid term let alone long term data on the effects or effectiveness of any COVID vaccine. The studies done by those selling the drugs found that those not getting the vaccine had less than a 1% chance of getting Covid. Though technically Pfizer didn’t even test their study participants to see if they contracted Covid. 74% of those getting the vaccine over placebo received the amazing effects of headaches, joint and or muscle pain. People with chronic pain can go to hell or take some opioids, right? Scientists at Thomas Jefferson university and the Jenner Institute including ones affiliated with the vaccine corporations said research shows the vaccines likely cause non-specific inflammatory responses.
Anyone else notice the cognitive dissonance in proclaiming the vaccines are so effective but won’t protect you unless everyone else is forced to get them? Or that they are so safe but everyone has to be forced to get them because they aren’t safe for some people?
You’re diatribe makes me want vaccine passports even more... I definitely don’t want you on my plane.
As for your cognitive dissonance, this really isn’t that complicated:
1) Some people, including every kid under 16, can’t get a vaccine right now, so we need to protect them.
2) Until enough people get vaccinated to create herd immunity, then the more people like you we allow to fly all over the country spreading Covid variants, the more the virus runs rampant, and the more likely a new mutation will spawn that renders all of our vaccines useless. Which puts us back to square one with the pandemic. So yea, sorry not sorry. Take the damn vaccine.
Herd immunity in the USA is insufficient. You pretty much need worldwide herd immunity...
I'm confused, why is it you want to create expand the pool of people who are at risk for spreading the disease?
Your statements about '74%' is straight up misleading. 3 in 4 people felt getting stuck by a needle.
Your statement about 1% chance to catch COVID is misleading. What is your 1% over? Because in the pandemic, it seems like that percent chance gets pretty high. In fact, a 1% chance every day translates to a 97% chance of it happening this year.
And in fact, your statement doesn't match the Pfizer trial results. Nowhere does '1%' exist as a number actually calculated.
You’re confused why I’m against forcing drugs on people let alone drugs with zero long term or medium term evidence. I’m confused why you think forcing drugs you know next to nothing about on others is a moral and good idea.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577
There is the Pzifer study, which is the most biased in favor of the drug because it comes from those selling the drug. .84% of non vaccinated people were recorded as catching Covid.
The 74% pain resulted 7 days post vaccination.
Next time you want to make a claim do the research first instead of fabricating something that sounds reasonable. Practice good science and don’t fabricate assumptions just because they are what you want to believe. If we went with your pseudo-science practices we would have to say Alcohol is a safe and effective because two months of use doesn’t lead to liver, cancer, or other physical deaths.
The mere fact that you conflate drugs and vaccines is enough to discredit all the rest of the bafflegab you posted.
You can elect not to be vaccinated and forego the passport. Kinda like if you elect not to take the vision test and so forego a driver's license. Or if you elect to drop out of high school and so forego a job as a physician. Choices have consequences, buttercup.
You clearly do not understand the difference between the risk of infection over the course of a few-months trial vs. lifetime risk. Nor the differences between a population, random samples from a population , and self-selected samples. Nor the difference between acute/transitory and chronic conditions. You conflate mild and debilitating pain and every degree between. You’ve added nothing worth considering to the discussion. Do better.
I am pro-science and therefore I don’t fabricate long term results based on biased short term results that do not even measure health outcomes. Opioid were claimed to be safe and effective for the same motivated reasoning you’re using. The result was a lot of dead people. If tobacco companies utilized your pseudo-science and claimed tobacco was safe you’d laugh, yet here you are using the exact same argument.
The rest of your posts consist of strawman, red herring with some addition ad hominem logical fallacies. They are pretty effective when you don’t have a valid argument and need to distract from that.
Do you understand the temporary immunity effects of inflammation and the long term negative health effects of inflammation and how it is related to the topic?
I can’t see any negative consequences in turning a group of people into second class citizens unless they take drugs they perceive as harmful.
Anyone else notice the cognitive dissonance in proclaiming the vaccines are so effective but won’t protect you unless everyone else is forced to get them?
You're Canadian, right? Do the authorities there not require proof of immunizations to enroll children in school?
I don't think anybody's advocating that people be picked up in police sweeps, brought to clinics, and forcibly administered vaccine jabs. But in Western countries, access to certain services, amenities and privileges has long been contingent on willingness to vaccinate. This is nothing new. And seems perfectly reasonable given the social (and often densely packed) nature of our species.
I'd be very surprised if it proves feasible to create vaccine passports here.
Having been vaccinated yourself, Mr. Drum, you have seen that vaccination card you get. Anybody with a printer-scanner-copier can forge those. So a useful document would have to somehow go back to retrieving medical records. But there are so many different medical records systems one would have to try to extract the data from, and they all have their own proprietary interfaces for information exchange. And there will be confusion for people (I know a few) who got their first dose one place and their second dose someplace else. And during the first wave, the government demonstrated that it was incapable of even gathering usable statistics about the progress of the epidemic. No, I don't think we have the capacity to do vaccine passports here.
It's sad to think about. In 1947, there was an outbreak of smallpox in New York City. Within *one week* they managed to vaccinate 5,000,000 people! That in an era with relatively primitive communications and information technology. But it was also an era when we didn't have the president and other idiots running around claiming that smallpox was a hoax.
A vaccine passport would not be a conventional physical document, but rather a digitally-signed (and thus verifiably tamperproof) token, which is manifested as just a string of characters (so a copy printed out on paper could be scanned and OCRed to convert back into electronic form). It would contain sufficient information to uniquely link it to an individual, to whatever degree of confidence is deemed necessary.
For example, the following token contains the name "John Doe" in an unalterable form:
eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzdWIiOiIxMjM0NTY3ODkwIiwibmFtZSI6IkpvaG4gRG9lIiwiaWF0IjoxNTE2MjM5MDIyfQ.SflKxwRJSMeKKF2QT4fwpMeJf36POk6yJV_adQssw5c
Technology is not the limitation here; political will and establishment of the necessary infrastructure are.
+1
That could have been true if we started off that way, but now, tens of millions of folks (including me) have nothing but a little piece of cardstock indicating we've been vaccinated. A digital token may be secure, but if they aren't assigned when you get the shot, how do you prove your status later - besides that little card? As soon as proving vaccination status becomes consequential, people will forge them easily and then claim their tokens.
As to other evidence: I pre-registered with both my state and my county to get vaccinated. I never heard from either one again, but when the state director of health made my age group eligible, I made an appt. at Wal-Mart (ugh :p ) and got the shot. Both state and local registries still show me on the waiting list, so they'd be no help in proving my status. Only WallyWorld knows, and I don't trust their records at all (especially after the super-sloppy experience getting the vax there).
Blockchain. That's what the passports need.
Dougherty’s blog post is reacting to ... two pro-passport tweets. One by Scott Adams. Now I guess he can do a followup responding to this post.
Mr. Drum, is it really necessary to publicly nutpick a nutpicker like MBD? I would instead let his embarrassing opus die of shame — cold and alone and utterly ignored.
(Why do people engage with him? I suppose he is less embarrassing than Mollie Hemingway but that’s not saying much.)
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But I'm willing to compromise on a vaccine passport instead. This assumes, naturally, that the passport is something that's feasible in the real world
The Chinese have been employing a universal covid health status app for about a year now. I was instructed to download it (in my case from Apple, as it happens, being an iPhone user) as soon as I got back in October. Couldn't be any easier to use. Pretty much the entire over 15 population (north of a billion souls) has it. When I get vaccinated, the app will be updated with my vaccination status. I imagine this is what US officials have in mind (at least I hope so: why reinvent the wheel?).
No way in hell that's happening here. People aren't going to accept being told they have to download some app so the government can track them and their medical information. I don't know anyone that would consent to that.
This concept was under active consideration last spring in the US; both Google and Apple had products ready to go*. And indeed some states (California?) havealready released versions. Also, during a pandemic, we want the government to know who has covid and who doesn't. And in any event as a society America is free to implement whatever privacy protections it deems necessary (anonymization of data, etc).
But sure, I can totally see the appeal of preventing the owners of a shopping mall or hotel from differentiating between infected and covid-free people trying to enter their property. /s
*Do you oppose contact tracing during a pandemic? The Big Eevil Gubmint might get some information about you, after all, right? Well, these phone apps are simply automatized contract tracing apps. Full stop. No need for large numbers of humans to man phone banks when an algorithm and hundreds of millions of distributed pieces of software can do the job flawlessly.
I think we're talking about slightly different things. I'm definitely not against the government doing contact tracing. I am hesitant to have Apple (or some other private company) do contact tracing and further enabling them to erode our privacy. But, in my comment above, I was talking about vaccine passports, not just contact tracing during the pandemic. Contact tracing should be a finite exercise. Once the pandemic dies down we wouldn't need to do it. Vaccine passports seem more open ended. If we need a vaccine passport six months from now, will we not need them a year from now? Four years from now?
Can someone help me out here.
I am the #3 person in a business in Maryland.
For whatever reason, we have decided NOT to require everyone to be vaccinated. I wasn't in the meeting where it was decided.
My boss says that we are NOT allowed to ask if people are vaccinated. It would be a HIPPA violation.
Is this correct? Is it a Maryland thing or a federal thing?
First, it's HIPAA.
And, it's not correct. HIPAA states that a *provider* can't disclose your medical information without your permission. The situation you describe doesn't fit that situation at all.
Maybe there's some other law that applies, but it's not HIPAA.
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I'm not sure the face punching analogy works. If I've been vaccinated, the libertarians can't punch me in the face in that fashion. They can still bully vulnerable people who can't take the vaccine, so I suppose there's a near by analogy that works...
Well, they can slap you one out of eight or ten tries, given the vaccines are 80 - 90% effective, and nearly perfect against cases leading to hospitalization. That’s quite a bit better than typical-year flu vaccine.
I think worrying about passports can wait two more months. Where's my fucking vaccine?!
Come to Florida. We have more than enough to go around. Starting next week anyone 16 and up can get it.
As a requirement for international travel, sure. There are already restrictions and conditions on that. But for internal travel in the US? No. Just no.
Once everyone who wants a vaccine has had one, what is the point of the passport? If you've had the vaccine, you're not going to get covid. (Or at least not get very sick. Depending on which vaccine you got there's around a 5% chance you could get a minor case.) For those that don't want to get the vaccine, they've made their choice so that's their problem.
Whose problem it is depends on how many make that choice. If it is more than 100 - (herd-immunity threshold percentage), their choice will put those unable to be vaccinated at risk, for the foreseeable future.
Once everyone who wants a vaccine has had one, what is the point of the passport?
I think the point is coercion. We want society to eventually fully reopen. If we're still seeing substantial numbers of persons getting infected and dying, that process will take longer. Also, such a situation is genuinely dangerous in that, by prolonging the period of widespread community transmission, it increases the opportunity for the virus to mutate, possibly into a version that will evade the protections conferred by existing vaccines.*
ERGO the difference between stalling at, say, 91% of the population vaccinated and 78% could prove hugely consequential. If vaccine fence-sitters are pushed over the top (into getting jabbed) by the knowledge they'll have trouble fully participating in society otherwise, we're more likely to get to that higher number. I strongly suspect if the concept of vaccine passports works as intended, we'll probably not need to fully implement it, because simple knowledge that it's coming will nudge holdouts into getting jabbed.
*A lot of the expert opinion seems to suggest we may eventually find covid is an annual or semi-annual visitor that requires regular inoculations using updated vaccines. But it would be nice for society to avoid this fate if possible; and if such a scenario is indeed an eventuality, it would be preferable to have some breathing room!
"I think the point is coercion. We want society to eventually fully reopen."
I guess my comments are influenced by my experiences and where I live. Florida has been open for many months, including our schools which have been open all year. I can see the how these passports may be a game changer for places that are still locked down. But for us in Florida, they don't offer much of benefit, just an extra hassle.
These vaccine passports would need to be digital and unalterable, as has been stated already.
How are you going to do that, now, after the fact?
Unless you are going to state
1. How it's going to be done now, not later
2. Which governmental agency is going to be in charge of it
3. Where the money is going to come from.
Then this is nothing more than a thought experiment.
If we're talking about future "boosters", then sure, let's figure it out now. But for initial vaccinations? That ship sailed.
Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve had vaccine passports for generations. If you left the country, you needed your shots and to take your little yellow card. Why does this have to be absolutely foolproof?
As the cases Kevin cited uniformly decided, no individual has veto power over the health and safety of the community. Everyone who can be vaccinated needs to be vaccinated. It isn’t a matter of individual choice since the choice not to be vaccinated endangers the community just as much as it endangers the individual.
I had my Pfizer vaccines on 12.22.20 and 1.12.21, don't try to paint me like I'm some anti-vax lunatic. I also have a card, so this isn't about me wanting to spread COVID everywhere I can, it's about making a vaccine passport more than just a nuisance to people who refuse to get the vaccine.
As of right now, there is no digital and unalterable method of proving that someone has been vaccinated. And there are thousands of vaccine cards that you can google search for, save, and edit with your own name.
So, we're going to what, require vaccine passports so that the only people who can do certain things are people who've actually been vaccinated, and those who have access to a computer and microsoft paint? Pointless.
But, as I've already said, since COVID vaccination will likely become a booster to be given annually, perhaps alongside the Flu booster...then we should be looking to implement an actual digital and unalterable way to prove it going forward.
As of right now, there is no digital and unalterable method of proving that someone has been vaccinated.
That seems a very broad statement. I live in China. Virtually the entire adult population uses a digital health status passport. My own will be updated in the next few days to indicate that I've gotten my first jab (appointment's Friday).
Unless I can figure out a way to hack into the database, I'm not going to "alter" the system into giving false information. And if China can develop such a technology, so too, can the United States (which at the end of the day has a more sophisticated software sector than the PRC). Indeed by all accounts, several major US tech firms have had exactly such "digital and unalterable" methods ready to go for months.
Nothing's ever 100% -- true. I suppose some antivaxxer somewhere here in China has bribed a local vaccine administrator to input false information into the system. But you don't need perfection. The system just has to be good enough to help protect society.
Yes, absolutely 1 billionty percent.
That a system can be developed and deployed that is digital and unalterable isn't a question.
I'm talking, again, about the fact that hundreds of millions of Americans have received their first and second vaccine with nothing but a piece of paper as proof.
That ship has sailed for the US. Unless, again, someone wants to tell me how we can digitalize and make unalterable previous vaccinations of hundreds of millions of people. Otherwise, my very first post still stands.
That ship has sailed for the US. Unless, again, someone wants to tell me how we can digitalize and make unalterable previous vaccinations of hundreds of millions of people. Otherwise, my very first post still stands.
Let's see. On the one hand I've got an anonymous guy on the internet claiming it can't be done. On the other hand I've got MSM reporting White House, Microsoft, Google, CDC, NASA, think tanks, top universities and many other entities are working on it.
Think I'm gonna go with the latter.
I never said that there wouldn't be vaccine passports for initial vaccines. I said they would be useless.
Anyone can google image search a vaccine card, put their own name in, and now they're ready to spread COVID as a vaccinated hero.
You think it's a good thing or whatever. What I'm saying is that going forward, if we want COVID vaccine passports to mean anything at all whatsoever, we need to start recording the vaccine information digitally and in an unalterable way.
A fraudulent vaccine passport is WORSE than not having a vaccine passport at all.
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