If vaccine passports become a thing for international travel, I unfortunately see that those that cannot have a vaccine (for whatever reason) unable to properly travel.
Take Yellow Fever. You can of course get an exemption certificate for it (my mum did just that on our recent trip to Tanzania), but in reality you are at the mercy of the Tanzanian border officials, who will ultimately decide whether that document is sufficient - if it’s not, you will get jabbed there and then with whatever needle they find. Thankfully they never checked our documents.
So for a vaccine passport for international travel to be non discriminatory, you need full cooperation from all countries throughout the world (yeah ok!!!) to recognise medical exemptions. Alternatively, a country such as the UK should lead the way and refuse to issue such a document on discrimination grounds and I reckon a lot of countries would soon follow our lead.
Domestic use really worries me though. Say I travelled 100 miles and forgot my vaccine passport at home (it could never be a mobile app unless of course we are to discriminate against all those that don’t own a smart phone). I could then potentially be unable to fill up my car with fuel to get home, or nip to the shop for food etc. And if I got stopped and I didn’t have this card, could I get fined? A year ago a lockdown was something a communist country may have done. Today, I don’t put it passed the Government to introduce legislation that I will be fined if not in possession of my domestic vaccine card at all times. A very slippery slope...
I do like your idea of the government saying we will not be issuing covid-passports under any circumstances, so long as it was qualified by giving the reasons, i.e. There are multiple vaccines, it may become necessary to offer regular boosters as with flu jabs, or perhaps even just that covid is endemic across the globe so what the hell point is there is carrying around a little piece of paper (or a few bits on a passport / smartphone) to say that you might be less likely to spread something that is already spread to every corner of the world.
You see this is my biggest objection to the idea of vaccine passports, that is to say that they are the bureaucratic equivalent of shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted, lived out a happy life in a field far away, and who now has several generations of family doing the same. But they could have some very unwanted side effects.
And by default, a vaccine card becomes a National Identity Card, to be carried at all times and presented on demand, with or without good reason, to anyone who fancies asking. Even the vendor in the park. No ID, no IC (ice cream).
The difference with Yellow Fever, as discussed on a radio programme the other day, there is only one version of the vaccine. The England Roadmap issued yesterday lists 8 vaccines for this country alone. What if Tanzania accepts Pfizer but not Moderna. Being vaccinated, but not suitably vaccinated is a clear risk. But then you take Tazara (the train) to Zambia, who accept Moderna but not Pfizer, then you continue to Democratic Republic of Congo who only accept the Russia vaccine (Sputnik was it?).
Indeed, and it is why I wish that governments would concern themselves more with getting the vaccine to all countries, so that they may protect their vulnerable & reduce the argument for vaccine passports in the first place.
I have mixed feelings on the use of vaccine passports. But to compare them with 1984 is ridiculous, as you’d know if you’d actually read it.
Meanwhile, I recommend reading that, and then his essay “Politics and the English Language” for an idea of why his prose style was and is so effective.
The world that Orwell projected us into with that book would not have started like that. The whole point of the story was a warning of what could happen if we let authoritarian regimes run unchecked. These kind of regimes have a starting point, where the rights & liberties of a country's citizens are stretched then eroded. And maybe it could start with some form of "health pass" off the back of covid.
Want to go shopping, sure just tap in with your smartID card which holds your vaccine status for covid. In fact why stop at covid, let's include all the childhood vaccines, maybe add influenza, then maybe in time add your mental wellbeing, your occupation, your political alignment. It all starts somewhere. What Nineteen Eighty Four sought to show us is where the rabbit hole leads us, it shows us that we the people (proles) must never allow ourselves to give responsibility for all our day to day decisions into the hands of government. Then along with Animal Farm Orwell showed us why we must not allow a person's status, job, or health determine what they can and cannot do.
I can. Have you ever seen the "look them in the eyes" propaganda posters designed to emotionally blackmail and keep you in line?
It's actually quite obvious once you see it. Painfully obvious in fact, to the extent where you cannot unsee it.
Its very disturbing isn't it.
"Look Big Brother in his eyes"....
