While tens of millions are vaccinated against Covid-19, officials in places as diverse as the state of New York, Israel and China have introduced “vaccine passports” and there is talk of making them universal. The idea is simple: after receiving your photos, you get a document or phone application, which you flash to access previously blocked locations – restaurants, theaters, sports stadiums, offices, schools.
It seems to be a way of easing the coercive blocking restrictions, but it is the opposite. To see why, consider dinner. Restaurants in most of the United States have already reopened, with limited seating in some places. A vaccine passport forbid potential customers who have not received your photos. This would restrict the freedom of even those who did: if you were vaccinated but your spouse was not, forget to dine out with the family.
Airplanes and trains, which continued to operate during the pandemic, were suddenly out of bounds for the unvaccinated. The only places where restrictions would be relatively eased would be those that are still completely blocked, like many live event venues and schools. Even so, the idea of the passport depends on keeping the underlying restrictions in place – giving the authorities an incentive to do so for much longer, as a lever to overcome resistance to the vaccine.
The vaccine passport must therefore be understood not as a relaxation of restrictions, but as a coercive scheme to encourage vaccination. These measures may be legitimate: many schools require immunization against common childhood illnesses and visitors from some African countries must be vaccinated against yellow fever. But Covid’s vaccine passports would harm, not benefit, public health.
The idea that everyone needs to be vaccinated is just as scientifically unfounded as the idea that nobody does. Covid vaccines are essential for older, high-risk people and their caregivers and advisable for many others. But those who have been infected are already immune. Young people are at low risk and children – for whom no vaccine has been approved – are much less at risk of death than flu. If the authorities order vaccinations for those who do not need them, the public will begin to question vaccines in general.