Should we require proof of vaccination when people visit restaurants or offices? Let’s imagine what the world would look like if we did.
Let’s pretend we want people to prove they’re vaccinated. Let’s pretend we want to be rigorous about preventing fraud like those fake vaccination cards I can buy online. Nearly everyone has a smart phone, so we’ll use an app.
And let’s pretend we want to protect privacy, so we partner with companies that already handle sensitive data. Our app doesn’t even reveal what vaccine I had or when: it just shows a green check-mark or a red x to indicate if I may safely enter. Maybe it’s smart enough to track some details in the background, so it shows a green check-mark when I show up at the grocery store with only one covid vaccination, but I need up-to-date boosters to go to my job at the hospital. (So far we’re not really pretending: Airside, the company that makes the Mobile Passport app, is already promoting an app for vaccine passports.)
Let’s pretend this system works. In fact it works so well and is so easy that it starts to grow. Medical workers, soldiers, and first-responders should really be up-to-date on all their vaccines—tetanus and flu and shingles—and having them flash the app when they show up at work acts as an easy reminder.
Let’s pretend our app makes schools safer. Registered sex offenders are supposed to stay away from schools; this can ensure they aren’t inadvertently admitted. Maybe convicted drug dealers too. Gun-owning parents can still come to the board meeting of course, but we might tweak the app to show yellow instead of red or green, calling for a polite pat-down.
Let’s pretend the TSA adopts our app to reduce wait times at the airport.
Let’s pretend that civil, peaceful people can agree that some high-risk institutions, places that have received death threats for their political activism—legislators’ offices maybe, or Planned Parenthood, or the Human Rights Campaign, or a mosque or church in an unfriendly neighborhood—would gain real security from knowing that they weren’t inadvertently welcoming a domestic terrorist into their midst.
Let’s pretend the app can deny admittance to those who have been affiliated with hate groups, or even with Capitol incursions.
Maybe our pretending is making some gun owners or Republicans nervous. What about those on the political left?
Well, so long as we’re pretending, let’s pretend the right-wing wins an election some day. They might, sooner or later.
Let’s pretend our app is perfect for voter ID: it flashes green if I’m a citizen, with voting privileges intact, if I reside in this district, if I haven’t already voted by mail or in another state.
Let’s pretend an undocumented immigrant needs to show the app while applying for a government service like a driver’s license or welfare. Or a job.
Let’s pretend we decide to track those Chinese grad students who are required to tell their embassy what they learn at their corporate internships. Maybe we want to prevent them from working at defense contractors. Maybe we decide it’s safer to isolate all foreign nationals from sensitive jobs.
Let’s pretend people from certain countries or religions are flagged as terror threats. Our app keeps them out of high-risk buildings, like stadiums or skyscrapers.
Enough politics.
Let’s pretend the app helps me avoid setting up a sleepover for my kids where there’s a history of domestic violence. It stops the disgruntled former employee from re-entering the warehouse. Prevents a wanted criminal from boarding a bus. Imagine how helpful that would be!
Let’s pretend my insurance company offers an optional discount for avoiding fast food. When I hit my monthly quota, our app helpfully stops me at the drive-thru.
Let’s pretend the app saves even more lives by preventing my car from starting when my license expires. Or when I’m late for an inspection. Or when I stop filling my prescription for antidepressants.
But this pretense is getting silly, I think. Surely a system that’s put into place to track one risk-factor—the likelihood of spreading covid-19—doesn’t have to expand into some totalitarian tool that dominates our lives based on a host of perceived risk factors.
Let’s pretend it doesn’t. Let’s pretend we stop at covid-19. Let’s pretend we all agree “These other risks, the ones that collectively kill many times more than covid-19, these are risks we just have to live with.”
Let’s pretend we’re willing to accept the 12,000 to 60,000 people killed annually by common influenza, even though there’s a vaccine available there, too. Let’s pretend we don’t scapegoat the people who refuse the flu vaccine and blame them for those deaths.
Let’s pretend our president doesn’t say “My job as president is to protect all Americans.”
Let’s pretend we don’t demand and lobby for government protection from every perceived threat.
Let’s pretend we don’t insist that our offices be “safe” from potentially infectious colleagues. Let’s pretend we don’t support efforts to fire those who don’t share our own notions about risk and liberty.
Let’s pretend the pharmaceutical manufacturers give up the guaranteed, government-provided revenue and liability protection that accompany government mandates for any of their other drugs.
Let’s pretend the thousands of companies that will be involved in the whole project—the databases and security software and privacy software, the mobile phone companies, the artificial intelligence providers, the security forces, the marketing firms to make all this seem palatable, the pseudo-intellectuals who pontificate about risk-mitigation—let’s pretend they choose to pass up all the business opportunities and wealth our app offers. Let’s pretend our businesses just hang an “OPEN” sign instead of putting a WELL Health™ seal on their doors.
Yes, let’s pretend this whole vaccine-mandate idea will handle covid-19 vaccines without making us into inhumane, suspicious, passive, terrified subjects of a technologically enabled state that intrudes (for our own safety) into every corner of our lives.
Better yet, let’s stop pretending altogether. Let’s stop even talking about “proof of vaccination.” And let’s stop now.
Good article