As we approached the one-year anniversary of home stay requests in the United States, the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine began, albeit in a rather confusing way. In the US, to date, more than 49 million people have received at least one dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, and more than 24 million have received their second dose as well, according to the CDC. Despite the Trump administration’s promises of smooth and wide distribution of the vaccine in the fall of last year, the vast majority of vaccinations were only administered under the direction of President Biden’s Task Force COVID-19. And stories of people skipping the line, political favoritism and wealthy individuals playing with the system continue to contaminate the process across the country.
Soon, however, with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on the way, anyone who wants to get a vaccine (in theory) will be able to get it – if their job and other circumstances allow it. This, in turn, prompted technocrats to recommend using vaccine passport apps to allow safe reopening of public spaces this summer. This is not the first time that application-based solutions are recommended during the COVID-19 pandemic. Contact tracking apps first hit the digital market in the summer of last year, but have struggled to pull themselves together, in part due to issues related to privacy and surveillance – issues that vaccine passport apps also share.
However, privacy rights concerns are not a luxury that everyone can afford, including the socio-economically disadvantaged, racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants and refugees and ex-prisoners – all historically under excessive government surveillance. No matter how many guarantees the technology giants have had, the adoption of vaccine applications will continue to encounter hesitation among marginalized communities, where individuals are routinely forced to renounce their right to privacy, often to qualify for government assistance. or in the name of public security. Ignoring this “poverty of privacy rights” means ignoring a sizable subset of the population who are less willing to give up their privacy, less trust in institutional authorities and less likely to receive equitable health care to receive the vaccine in the first place, to place.
Equity in the distribution of vaccines is a major obstacle to achieving collective immunity – an obstacle even for those who are already eligible. Low-income communities, communities of color and immigrants are so far among the least likely to have received the vaccine, yet they are more likely to not only fall ill with COVID-19, but also die from it. Adequate access to health care remains a barrier, and the ability to schedule and attend for a vaccination appointment remains dependent on internet access, employers’ flexibility and reliable transportation.
In addition, the hesitation of the vaccine that exists in subsets of these communities is due to a long history of systemic discrimination and abuse by medical institutions, such as the Syphilis Study of the U.S. Public Health Service in Tuskegee and the forced sterilization of black women, and indigenous people across the country – and the continuing disparities in the quality of care for minority groups in healthcare settings today. Disinformation campaigns by antivaxxers also target these communities specifically, further aggravating the situation.
In response to this hesitation, it can be argued that absorption can improve if individuals are unable to participate in indoor activities, such as going to the supermarket or the cinema, without a vaccine passport application in hand. Such an argument would not be unprecedented. For example, SB-277 in California banned personal exemptions from vaccination requirements for entry to public and private schools after the measles outbreak in 2015 at Disneyland. And according to immigration laws, the Department of Homeland Security mandates that those entering the United States for the first time or current foreigners applying for residency be vaccinated based on the recommendations of the Department of Health and Human Services. The immunization “cards” needed for commercial travel have also been around for some time, and the evolution towards the development of an “electronic vaccination certificate” system for post-pandemic travel is not surprising. Although vaccinated individuals currently receive a paper-based COVID-19 vaccine registration issued by the CDC, plans are already underway in the private sector to try a national application for immunization status.
However, while the public can support some form of vaccination verification to allow safer participation in indoor activities, a recent Brookings survey pointed out the concern that apps have a greater potential for privacy and civil liberties violations than paper cards, especially since the US law USA does little to protect against discrimination based on evidence of immunity. In addition, these applications would not only face challenges in terms of varied enforcement mechanisms, for example, entering a school or a supermarket, but also the aforementioned hesitation – regarding vaccination and application adoption – remains a major obstacle to be overcome. Combating misinformation about vaccines and distrust by public health authorities, as well as ensuring the protection of privacy, will be an ongoing battle. Furthermore, even those who would you like using a vaccine passport app may not be possible due to limited access to smartphones.
Ultimately, relying only on vaccine passport applications to reopen society will translate mainly into privileged communities that will return to normalcy. These applications can be useful in very limited circumstances, such as commercial air travel, but these efforts are essentially trivial for the most urgent consideration of vaccinating the general public fairly. The focus should remain on addressing the underlying concerns of marginalized communities, improving government involvement with community leaders to promote accessibility and vaccine adoption and provide alternatives for signing up for vaccine appointments for those without a smartphone or Internet access ( such as landline and mail scheduling)
Focusing on vaccine passport applications as a magical solution to get back to normal is a mistake, as long as an equitable distribution of vaccines remains out of reach and marginalized communities continue to be left behind.