Papers, Please! Vaccine Passports.

Vincent J. Curtis

14 Aug 21

Those who shout the loudest for vaccine passports seem to be the ones who have thought about it the least.

What exactly constitutes “vaccinated?”  One shot, or two?  If it’s two and you’ve had only one, do you have to wait one, two, or three months before you can get a second? Meanwhile, you’re deemed unvaccinated.

If you’ve just got your second, do you have to wait four weeks before the second shot is deemed to have taken effect before you’re considered fully “vaccinated”?  Somebody’s going to have to make an arbitrary ruling, and that ruling almost certainly won’t be “following the science.”

What if the fashion becomes to get a third shot, as now seems possible?

As a practical matter, the vaccination enforcers aren’t interested in your actual vaccination status, they want to see your papers that say you’re vaccinated.  Given the rigmarole above, how long will it take to get the appropriate form or card from the government?

If you’re not interested in having a form downloaded to your smartphone because you don’t want the government or Big Tech to know where you are and where you’ve been, then something physical like a card has to be an option.  And if you’re concerned about forgery, why trust anything that appears on the screen of a smartphone?  The vaccine enforcer many not either.  And what if the form requires a photograph?  More complications.

Then there’s the question of how long will these passports be necessary.  If COVID become endemic like the seasonal flu, will these passports become a permanent feature of life?  How often will they have to be renewed?  Government programs never seem to end, and vaccine passports aren’t going to just disappear if it is a real bother to get the program going.

The Road to Serfdom is a title already taken, so how about The Road to Fascism?

-30-