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Is the Tide Turning Against Vaccine Passports?
They might be our ticket back to pre-Covid normal. Or they might be “literally the end of human liberty in the West.”
Vaccine passports have become all the rage lately among those who are sick of Covid and ready to get back to normal. Fans of vaccine passports point out, rightly, that even though a vaccine is now available, and will soon be accessible to everyone according to the Biden Administration, not everyone will get the vaccine.
Those unvaccinated people can still spread Covid. As such, it might be helpful to know- without relying on the honor system as humanity has always done, with mixed success- who has been vaccinated and who hasn't.
Limiting large event access to people who have already been vaccinated sounds like a reasonable idea. Opponents of the vaccine passport idea point out, however, the fact that requiring official credentials- of any kind- often impacts already marginalized communities the hardest and wouldn’t end with concerts and sporting events.
With good reason, there are plenty of communities in the U.S. with an authority-avoidance mindset- for instance, undocumented immigrants. The ACLU, the WHO, and other agencies have voiced objections to the idea of vaccine passports.