(2021-04-01) Zvi M Covid0401 Vaccine Passports

Zvi Mowshowitz: Covid-19 4/1: Vaccine Passports. This week started a big debate over vaccine passports.

Meanwhile, the overall arc remains the same. Things are getting worse again, and it’s a race to see how long it will take vaccinations to catch up to the problem and get us headed in the right direction again.

Cases

Sharp increases in the Northeast and Midwest, and small increases in the West and South. The fourth wave is here, the question is whether it will be small or it will be large. These are big weekly increases and there’s zero sign of any new restrictions happening, so the strategy seems to be waiting on vaccinations to get us out of this. That will work, but the tide won’t turn that way alone for at least a few weeks.

Vaccinations

Occasional dips and spikes aside, this continues to look almost exactly like a linear increase in doses available per day over the course of several months.

Availability for those who make an effort seems remarkably good based on anecdotal evidence. Most of my Magic friends have been able to find slots quickly now that they are eligible, often finding next day availability.

Vaccine Passport Hype

For an entire year, we’ve failed to provide immunity passports, due primarily to our determination to refuse to in any way acknowledge that people who got Covid-19 were then immune to reinfection, or that someone’s actual physical risk of getting Covid-19 should be considered when deciding what actions to take.

You download a QR code on your phone, anyone can scan it and see that you’re vaccinated, or notice you can’t produce one and exclude you from risky activities.

there are objections. It’s worth dealing with them. The first job is to list all the distinct objections I’ve seen or that I can think of, and I managed to get to 12 (with some overlap):

Some of these seem purely hostile and/or stupid. Others are legitimate concerns.

Privacy Concerns

There are multiple different privacy concerns, regarding different actors getting access to different information. Some are unavoidable, others are a choice. It’s important to track them separately.

The big distinction I would draw is between the information on who has been vaccinated and the information of who has been where and done what other things.

I think the concern ‘people will respond to me based on how likely I am to have Covid-19’ is a stupid objection

The other privacy concern is that this risks tracking us more generally, or opening the door to such tracking, and that’s a completely legitimate objection.

It would be quite bad, in my view, if the government had records of who was where at what time for many everyday activities. It is very reasonable to not want any part of such a system. It is also very reasonable to worry that once such a system is in place, the powers that be would find a way to make the system permanent

Can anyone think of an example of where such information was created, and the government was respectful of our rights and didn’t check it whenever they felt like it?

Equity Concerns

There are two potential inequalities.

There is the concern that some people don’t have smartphone access

A QR code can be placed upon a piece of paper, and those without a phone can carry the piece of paper

The real concern is that this is punishing people for not getting the vaccine, combined with the concern that some groups and communities aren’t getting equal access to the vaccine

During the period where vaccines have been widely available for long enough for everyone to get them, I consider equity concerns solved.

Before vaccines are easy to acquire, the argument is stronger. In particular, a reasonable concern would be if major life activities ended up gated by passports before those passports could reasonably be acquired

The obvious solution there is to not allow vaccine passports to be used as gateways to essential life activities until such time as vaccine availability is complete, except insofar as there’s sufficient risks involved in the activity that it makes sense to require the passport anyway.

Coercion Concerns and Approval Concerns

It’s not us forcing you to get vaccinated, but it’s not not forcing it, either. It’s a rather strong nudge, a punishment for being unvaccinated slash a reward for being vaccinated.

If you don’t have a deep suspicion of anyone who wants to force or coerce others into their preferred patterns of behavior, you need to get more deeply suspicious.

They don’t mean we should never force anyone to do anything

We should and do require people to get vaccinations! You can’t go to school, or get many jobs, without proof of vaccinations. The externality argument, and the ‘this is an overwhelmingly worthwhile thing to do’ argument, are both extremely strong. A vaccine is exactly the place where we should be least suspicious of coercion.

The approval concern is that it’s not reasonable to apply this coercion if the FDA isn’t even willing to fully approve the vaccine. There are several responses to this, but the main one is that if the FDA is playing bureaucratic games with its labeling and timing in ways that have killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, that’s on the FDA, and we should not take such labels either seriously or literally

Fraud Concerns and Practical Concerns

Can’t people who want one simply fake a QR code that will represent that they are vaccinated? Especially if the system is meant to protect their privacy?

*how are we to feel about a system where it’s not that hard to fake being vaccinated?

Presumably we should feel a similar way to how we feel about people showing ID to buy alcohol.*

The same way I think it would be better if the laws against minors consuming alcohol were less strict but were more strictly enforced, it would be best if we used the passports only when necessary, but ensured that it was difficult and/or risky to fake them.

Thus, the practical concerns involve privacy and fraud. They also involve error

Fear and Norm Concerns

Vibe and Anti-Elite and Vague Concerns

I do think that a vague uncomfortableness is appropriate for various reasons (again, there are 13 concerns listed) and this represents a threshold effect that needs to be overcome.

Culture War and Motive Concerns

Summary on Vaccination Passport Arguments

it is important to find and push for a technological solution that doesn’t allow the tracking of who had their QR code scanned where and when. I would also be concerned if we were to start screening off essential aspects of life within the next few months

Vaccines Still Work

it’s potentially slower than we thought, based on the timing of the real world data. You still have a lot of protection by day 10, but I wouldn’t get excited on day 7, and waiting until day 14 isn’t crazy

Vaccines don’t work, unfortunately, if you ruin them during the manufacturing process. Which seems to have happened to 15 million doses (!) of Johnson & Johnson.

The argument that ‘money’ is not effectively the limiting factor on vaccine production now has to explain why people for whom ‘it was no secret that [they] did not have a deep bench of pharmaceutical manufacturing experts’ were put in charge of one of the major vaccine production sites.