8 reasons why vaccine passports are a bad idea

We all want to live like there's no pandemic. Vaccine passports are not the answer.

Everyone is talking about vaccine passports this week. The idea is simple: After being vaccinated against Covid-19, you would be able to prove it with a vaccine passport — a card or app that tells anyone you got the shot.

A vaccine passport is considered a license to attend crowded events, travel, dine in restaurants and to move about in public without a mask — to enjoy what The New York Times calls "immunoprivilege."

There are hundreds of vaccine passport initiatives emerging. One of the most credible is the CommonPass app being developed by the World Economic Forum. It aims to verify via digital vaccination records and offers up a QR code on the user's smartphone, which can be scanned for quick access to transportation or venues. 

National governments, health organizations and lots and lots of technology companies are jumping on the vaccine passport bandwagon. 

So what's the problem? There are 8 reasons why vaccine passports are a bad idea: 

1. There are no international standards for vaccine passports, which means that different people using different systems with different vaccines make passports more fakable and less compatible with whatever systems are put in place to read or register the passport.

2. The vaccine passport idea makes assumptions that we don't know are true. We don't know if vaccinated people can still infect others. If vaccines do prevent contagiousness, we don’t know for how long.  

3. Vaccine passports deepen existing inequality. Inevitably, elites will get the vaccine first and enjoy immunoprivilege, all the while urging or ordering non-elites to stay at home. 

4. They distract from the solution. We need all hands on deck focused on contact tracing, vaccine distribution, social distancing and mask wearing, not on a free pass for the privileged. 

5. They could risk privacy, as vaccination data is often accompanied by other data. 

6. They could be gamed, hacked or faked by the non-vaccinated. 

7. Smartphone-based vaccine passports penalize half the world's population that doesn't own a smartphone. 

8. They could help spread the virus. Vaccines are never 100% effective. So if any given vaccine is, say, 85% effective, that means 15% of people with vaccine passports can still get and spread the virus as if they were not vaccinated. That 15% will take their passport and engaging in virus-spreading behaviors.

   We don’t need special privileges for elites. We need to end the pandemic. The best course of action is to get vaccinated, but continue to adhere to guidelines in your area for masking, sheltering in place and all the rest until the pandemic is over.