The Europeans react to mandatory “vaccine passports”

August 10, 2021 • 2:00 pm

Many don’t like them, but they’re a good idea nonetheless. They were issued in the EU to allow easier travel (see details here), but are apparently also required for restaurants, gyms, and other infection-producing venues.

We’ll see the same thing when they start them up in the U.S.

65 thoughts on “The Europeans react to mandatory “vaccine passports””

  1. My only complaint is that they gave me a single official card when I’d like three; one for the walllet, one to stick in the passport, one for home records.

    Still, as long as people accept copies I can’t see this as much of a burden.

    1. The paper card is pretty silly. However, there are many electronic equivalents and it is quite likely you can just take a picture of the paper one and keep that handy on your phone. It should have all been electronic from the start. So embarrassing.

      1. As long as the electronic form is optional, I concur. But the paper form has to remain, too, for people like me who have no smartphone.

        1. Same here. I guess it will inescapably come to pass that I’ll have to get a smartphone. Verizon occasionally bugs me to contract for a smartphone – they’d be glad to get more money from me. (Ought I currently be so embarrassed that I have only a clam shell? Try as I might I can’t.)

          1. I don’t see that for me in the forseeable future. As handy as some of their functions are, I have happily lived without them for the last 50 years, or I can spread them among specialized devices like a camera for photographs, and a chipTAN generator for online banking – one job, one tool. For me personally, smartphones are just too invasive in my privacy. They are little data sinks and tracking devices, and I’m not talking about government agencies who may be more or less regulated, but about commercial companies whose business model is data trading, the manufacturers of the phones themselves being some of the most prominent of them.

            Apart from that, I prefer a “dumb phone” that I don’t have to charge every other day. 😛

            As for COVID19-related apps and privacy, a good bad example is an German app called “Luca” that’s meant for bars and restaurants to track and inform possibly infected customers in case of a Corona outbreak at their premises. It’s widely used in Germany and even endorsed by several state governments despite heavy criticism from security and privacy experts regarding many (and I mean many) technical and conceptional deficiencies of the app.

            A paper card doesn’t have any of such disadvantages, but it fulfills its single purpose perfectly. 👍

  3. The French never pass up an opportunity to demonstrate against the government. And it’s true that Macon has been fairly heavy-handed in dealing with this. But the number of protesters here, several times 10K, is amazing. I don’t understand it, myself.

    It’s clear that there is more behind it than just anti-pass. In fact, one protester yesterday was brandishing an anti-semitic sign, so there are a lot of cranks out there who just need to sound off.

      1. You mean like when a building inspector asks a contractor to see his building permit, or a cop stops you and asks to see your driver’s license? Yeah, that’s truly outrageous, isn’t it?

        1. I am not required to carry a license when I am not driving. I don’t need a permit to live.

          1. (In the US) you have to show ID (proof of age) to get a drink at a bar. And depending on the place and time, to even get in the door.

            This rule applies to places like bars. So you’re not having to do much different than you still technically should have to do, and what you did when you were in your 20s.

          2. Actually in most American jurisdictions you DO need your d/l on your person when driving or a small fine is levied.
            The vax permit is not “to live”, unless you can’t live without restaurants, the gym, movies, cafes, etc. You can avoid the vaccine AND the paperwork but your lifestyle will be suitably reduced. And you won’t be infecting innocent people.
            D.A.
            NYC

      2. While the ‘papers, please’ complaint does resonate, AIUI it’s applied to non-necessary businesses. So not groceries and the like, which you can still get unvaccinated, but places like restaurants…that would otherwise be closed under the old rules. So the choice is between “restaurant closed” or “restaurant open, must be vaccinated.” How can anyone prefer the former, except out of spite?

        We have all these conservatives complaining about the cost to the economy and businesses. Very well, here’s an opportunity to open them up more, which should please conservatives, while minimizing infectious spread, which should please liberals. So let’s all support it, right?

        I think people are just lazy grumps. Any time they have to do something different than what they’re used to, and it takes even minimal effort, they will complain about it. You mean I have to go upstairs and copy my vaccination paper? And then I have to carry it with me? What an outrage! Why can’t someone just wave a magic wand and fix things so I don’t have to do that extra effort?

        1. In the beginning, when conservatives were claiming that COVID was overblown, they were advocating keeping the economy open. Although the premise was wrong, there was enough scientific uncertainty that it was not 100% unreasonable position. I remember thinking, all the evidence seems to point the other way but they might be right. Certainly I recognized the possibility that an overreaction to COVID could damage the economy unnecessarily.

          Those times are way behind us now. We know a lot about COVID and have several effective vaccines. Unfortunately, conservatives can’t seem to change their message in response to new knowledge. Now, instead of saving the economy, they actually stand to do it harm. This thing could have been over by now if everyone had gotten their shots and worn their masks. Biden should be saying it just like that over and over again.

        2. A key I think is the reference to how (some) people react to new things and to change. I don’t understand the conservative mind, as I am not one, but what seems important to them in the U.S. is individualism. So they react negatively to people telling them that businesses must restrict crowding and require masks. And then of course efforts for vaccine mandates is a big button that gets pushed. Never mind that all of this saves lives, or that there are lots of vaccine mandates already for access to public schools. This is new. And new get opposed.

    2. Reminds me of the one where, in response to the suggestion that volunteers would start going door-to-door answering COVID and vaccine questions, GOP politician Madison Cawthorn suggested that this would create an infrastructure for gathering up guns and bibles. Classic slippery slope BS.

  5. What is very important about having some sort of identifier regarding vaccine status is that it takes the burden off of restaurants and other businesses from having to police their customers. I suppose the most versatile way to carry it is on a lanyard.

    Would pro green pass demonstrations be much larger?

  7. Physical evidence of vaccination isn’t reliable as it simply generates an industry that forges them. On the other hand, digital passports are much slower for use in high volume situations, and of course many don’t own smart phones. I can see them remaining a requirement for travel purposes, where delay of some sort is already built into expectations, but it’s unlikely to survive long in domestic situations.

    1. Can’t they just scan the micro-chip that Bill Gates (or was it Dr. Fauci? I forget) implanted in you when you got the vaccine?

  8. My principal objection to vaccine passports is that they seem a precursor to internal passports as they existed in the Soviet Union. It’s a very effective means of controlling a population. The fact that they would be linked to getting on planes and trains means the slippery slope is very short and steep.

    1. It has long been a requirement for French citizens to have a national identity card and it is a requirement to carry it with you. Foreigners are also supposed to carry an identity card or passport with them whilst in France. Similar requirements apply in a number of other European countries. Despite this it would be far from the truth to suggest that French citizens are controlled in the way Soviet citizens were or that they are not free to come and go as they please (at least outside of covid pandemic times). Of course if you end up with a non democratic, despotic government then ID cards are helpful to it in maintaining their subjugation of the population but I think the evidence does not support the idea that having ID cards in itself leads to such tyranny. Multiple factors give rise to despotic governments seizing power and, of course, once they are in power they can do what the hell they like to control the population.

      I think there are other things that governments in western democracies have been trying to do in recent years in the name of the ‘war on terror’ which are a more serious threat to civil liberties. In the UK at various times this has included proposals to make it easier for government agencies to tap phones and other telecoms, proposals to increase the time people can be held in custody without charge, proposals that would put journalists at risk of lengthy prison sentences for publishing leaked government documents, amongst others. There has been push-back on all of these things but it seems to be a natural urge of most governments to seek to acquire more powers for themselves over citizens (often while talking of reducing the scale of the State). These powers are argued to be necessary to address the risk of terrorism but, as with other risks in our lives such as the risk of road traffic accidents, there is a balance to be struck between further reduction in risk and the cost of doings so in terms of constraining our freedom.

      1. And we live in the only country to go from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between, as some foreigner once observed. 🙂

  12. I remain skeptical for a couple of reasons. The way such things tend to work here is that someone is going to get a huge pile of funding to develop and administer these things. The companies that believe they are likely to get such a contract are lobbying heavily for it to be required for everyone. There is a digital ID industry, and they support all sorts of concepts that would be profitable for them, and Orwellian for us. (Biometricupdate.com predicts “explosive growth”)
    Additionally, we live in a time and place where if there is a way to misuse something like this, someone is going to gleefully do it. We should always ask, even when something like this is proposed for good reasons, whether there is even a slight possibility for abuse.

    I am not a digital privacy expert, but a couple of ways this could be abused come quickly to mind. I assume we are talking about an app on your phone that produces a bar code or something, which would be read by businesses and others. That seems like a great opportunity to compile records of every place you go. Such a record might be used to make you a suspect should a crime occur in a place you have been in the vicinity of. I bet someone with such data could come to all sorts of conclusions about a person’s behavior or beliefs.

    Underage people used to borrow a friends ID to drink. An effective health passport system would need to have safeguards against phones being loaned for access, or unvaxxed people carrying an image of a valid bar code on their phone. So some more robust biometric links might be called for.

    Any system that can be used to allow you to engage in free commerce and travel can also be used to deny you those things.

  13. It is an undemocratic practice for the State to mandate that any free, adult individual allow an injection into their body that they, for whatever incentive find themselves compelled by to reject. And the reasons are more than valid and arguably sound in this regard compared with, for example, the reasons that most women who have abortions choose to do so. Somehow the liberal/left-feminist mantra of “My body, my Choice” fails to have relevance here.

    Should anyone be expected, out of peer pressure, to join a rugby team and have their heads, ribs and arms violently bashes about when they have no affinity what so ever for contact sports, no matter how fun and safe the game looks and is proclaimedd to be from those cheering from the sidelines?

    One doesn’t need to be a hoarder and or dispenser of conspiracy theories to be in support of the right of the individual to protect and safe guard their body from a percieved threat to it.

    However, on the other hand, if those who refrain from getting the shot also refrain from wearing masks and or maintaining properly safe distance when in public, indoor places then, in my opinion they are acting outside of fact and reason and thus are putting themselves and others possibly at an unjustifiable risk.

    Not being able to go to the movies, eat inside at a restaurant, get the lates hairstyle is not a major inconvenience on one’s survival. But, being fired from your job for not allowing the government to violate your autonomy by doing to you, what they deem is best for you and society and requiring a digital code to certify your compliance to possibly soft coercion is a step in the wrong direction taken by free and democratically governed countries.

    Anyone forced to be a team player will in the end be compelled to loath the team and the ideals as wellas acheivements it’s supposed to represent. I prefer to trust my neighbor instead of developing incentives with which to fear and or hold them in suspect of possibly not trusting me.

    1. You’ve put your new right into legal sounding words but it’s a complete fabrication. There’s no absolute right to infect people, just as there’s no right to murder your neighbor. The government reserves the right to throw your butt in jail if you don’t behave as it sees fit or send you off to fight a war. There’s no absolute right not to get an injection if it is needed to protect society. You can argue that an injection does you irreparable harm but you can get a letter from your doctor if that’s the case. You can also argue that obligatory inoculations don’t benefit society enough to be warranted but that has to be made with statistics and such.

    2. I think people in the west these days lack a perspective on the sort of damage preventable diseases used to do, before they became preventable.
      People who actually experienced what that was like established a series of precedents, including at the US supreme court, that compulsory vaccination is in “the broad discretion required for the protection of the public health.”
      If you travel a bit you will see that lots of places require certain vaccinations to visit, and if you have visited others, you need particular vaccinations to come back.
      However, having your immunization card checked at customs, or when enrolling at school does not seem the same as having to do so many times each day, as demanded by Walmart greeters, restaurant hostesses, and an array of other people.
      I also expect that once all of this is in place, it will not go away once the Covid imperative passes. No doubt our betters will find all sorts of interesting ways to take advantage of such a system, once it is in place.

      On the positive side, depending on one’s politics, the issue of voting id might become moot once we all get used to constantly producing our Blauschein on demand.

      1. “I think people in the west these days lack a perspective on the sort of damage preventable diseases used to do, before they became preventable.”

        Bullseye.

        To every incidence of anti-vax nonsense I read online, I reply: “You need to tour some graveyards from any time before 1920. And you need to read some history.”

        Routine child death due to now-preventable disease was so, well — routine, that it wasn’t much remarked upon. Only when large pandemics killed lots of adults did disease get the spotlight.

        People are generally ignorant of history. American anti-vaxxers are among the most ignorant.

        1. Today was the first day I did not have to preach for at least a fortnight.
          I’m ‘harassing my patients , asking them if they are vaccinated, and if not, why not, and if not planning to, why. Today, all of them were vaccinated or were planning to get the jab(s): Miracle!
          I also preach against the dangerous use of Ivermectin, which, if used chronically (remember it is used by vets as a single dose deworming therapy) damages livers and kidneys. Ivermectin use is widely spread in South Africa, is that the same in the US?
          Note as a bonus feature, a lagniappe, Ivermectin masks the symptoms of severe Covid (according to the SA’n college of anesthetists and ICU Drs), so these patients often present only when they are beyond saving.

          1. Today, all of them were vaccinated or were planning to get the jab(s): Miracle!

            Well done! 👍

  14. I wasn’t intending for my words to sound legal only rational and democratically sound.
    It’s quite revelatory and disconcerting how you confute my advocating for the right of the individual not to allow the government to violate their body with a vaccination, that has not had nearly the average time span for developement to be properly certified by the FDA as all the “obligatory inoculations” you mention historically have been, with that of my advocating an absolute right for some to infect others. That’s quite a leap. The fact of my stating that people who refuse a vaccination and also refuse to take regular precautions like wearing masks and keeping required distances are acting irresponsibly and naturally need to be held acountable, ought to have guided you clear of imputing such an irrational conclusion to my statement.

    The government has the legal right to throw me in jail if they have evidence and can prove that I have broken the law, and not simply out of Caprice or not liking how I behave if I am not breaking any law. I also have the right to challenge any unjustifiable actions by them in this regard.

    And, if there were, as you claim no absolute right to not get an injection, well then why have the rights of those choosing not to get one, not been overtly and absolutely violated by the governments in question in order to make that assertion papably clear to avoid any confusion in the matter on the part of all those refusing and or choosing not to?

    1. IMHO, the government should mandate vaccinations for all without certain medical conditions, though it is reasonable to wait until the FDA actually approves the vaccine. It won’t happen, of course, but it should.

      Clearly the government would mandate vaccinations to prevent those asserting their “right” not to get one from infecting others. That’s not a leap as you call it. You may think your rights are being violated but the rest of us think you are violating our rights to continued good health by not getting vaccinated. It is all a matter of perspective and that’s why we have these discussions. What I was objecting to was the implication that you have some absolute right that would be violated that ought to shut down all argument.

    2. AFAIUI having a covid vaccination is not mandatory in most countries. You can choose not be vaccinated and you won’t be sent to jail. However, if you wish to do certain things such as visit a night-club or work in certain types of job then having the vaccine becomes a requirement. This makes it comparable to the driving licence. No-one has to have one but if you choose not to get one you are not allowed to drive on the highway. Furthermore, if you choose not to have a driving licence, as you are free to do, you will find that certain kinds of employment are not open to you (delivery driver, to give an obvious example). The covid-19 virus still has the capacity to kill large numbers of our fellow citizens and it seems arrogant to me that some people insist on their right to behave in ways that put other people at risk.

  15. The headline is a bit misleading, since while many might dislike them, most think that they are a good idea. There will always be a stupid minority of anti-vaxxers, creationists, incels, religious fundamentalists, etc.

    1. Kind of typical to just brush away any opposition to ideas as ‘stupid’. I am fully vaccinated but completely and totally against any sort of measure of this magnitude. It’s an insane government overreach, and I hate that that makes me sound like some kind of USA Republican while I’m not.

      I really don’t want to have to prove I’m ‘healthy’ before entering a restaurant. These measures do nothing to curb the spread and once implemented will be incredibly hard to get rid of again. Before 2020 this sort of government micromanagement was only beholden to countries like China and completely unthinkable in liberal Europe. And for very good reasons. This is utterly dystopian.

      1. When so many are sick, how can you possibly say that checking your health when entering a restaurant does nothing to curb the spread? We have plenty of evidence that one sick person can infect many others in a closed space like a restaurant.

      2. “I really don’t want to have to prove I’m ‘healthy’ before entering a restaurant”

        I really don’t want to die because someone with a contagious disease decides it’s ok to sit at the table next to mine. Which is more serious, your tiny inconvenience or my heightened risk of dying?

        In most countries you have to prove your competence before you can drive a car. Are you against drivers’ licencses becasue you “really don’t want to have to prove” that you can drive?

        A society cannot function if there are no basic rules protecting its citizens against the bullying of other citizens. That’s the purpose of laws: to find a balance between the promotion of the common good versus the freedom of inherently selfish individuals. In this case, the impact of a tiny and easily removable restriction on some individuals must be balanced against the enormous personal and economic effects of a lethal pandemic. That doesn’t seem like a tough one to decide.

        1. If you don’t want to die because of COVID you can get a vaccine that protects you better than any other meausure you can think of. A society cannot function if people are assumed to be infected when there is no reason to suspect that.

      3. No one’s asking you to prove you’re “healthy” before entering a restaurant — merely that you’re a low risk to be carrying an airborne contagious disease that has reached the stage of pandemic before entering a crowded, enclosed space open to the general public.

        1. That is a distinction without a difference. And once again you seem to forget that vaccines exist. If you take your two shots you never have to worry about catching COVID ever again. Or worry about it as much as you worry about a car smashing into the restaurant and killing you.

          1. Don’t you forget that vaccines don’t protect you 100% from an infection, and that there are many people who can’t get vaccines for health-related reasons? Furthermore, some of the new CoV-2 variants are known or suspected for immune escape (Lamda being a prime suspect), making a blind trust in vaccines not very advisable.

            A higher infection rate also means a higher chance for even more variants to arise, so it should be kept as low as possible, and as long as a significant part of the population isn’t vaccinated (e.g. around 40-50% of those younger than 65 in the US), other measures like masks, social distancing, and entry restrictions, are necessary to prevent spreading the virus among the unvaccinated and – although with a much lower chance – the vaccinated alike.

          2. There is no safety measure in the world that guarantees 100% safety and besides that the vaccines are made to protect you against symptoms, not an infection. A very common but dangerous mistake.

            Hypothetical variants are just fearmongering. No measures are necessary if you just take the vaccine. Again, just vaccinate and there’s no need to ever think about COVID anymore.

  16. “I really don’t want to die because someone with a contagious disease decides it’s ok to sit at the table next to mine.”
    That seems like sound reasoning to get vaccinated. Once you are vaccinated, your chances of dying from contact with an asymptomatic person sitting next to you are much smaller than your chances of dying while riding or driving to and from the restaurant.

    It has been uncontroversial for a very long time that people suffering from infectious disease should avoid infecting others, or even be quarantined by force. Such quarantines were a normal part of life until very recently. Of course the basis upon which that system relied was the belief that contagious persons could be readily identified.

    Much of what we seem to be doing now is based on the belief in asymptomatic or presymptomatic persons driving the pandemic, and the assumption that everyone is infected unless they can prove otherwise. A meta analysis in Nature suggested that there is some debate on that issue. My limited understanding of the studies supporting large-scale asymptomatic spread indicate that such spread was predicted largely through mathematical modeling, based on things like virus count in throat swabs, not through contract tracing. The one study I know of that actually traced transmission through a large population included the following-
    “Virus cultures were negative for all asymptomatic positive and repositive cases, indicating no “viable virus” in positive cases detected in this study….All asymptomatic positive cases, repositive cases and their close contacts were isolated for at least 2 weeks until the results of nucleic acid testing were negative. None of detected positive cases or their close contacts became symptomatic or newly confirmed with COVID-19 during the isolation period.”
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w

    Of course that is a Chinese study, so the appropriate trust level should be applied.

    If it does turn out that asymptomatic people are not spreading the disease significantly, it appears that much of our efforts thus far have been performative rather than preventative.

    1. “It has been uncontroversial for a very long time that people suffering from infectious disease should avoid infecting others, or even be quarantined by force. Such quarantines were a normal part of life until very recently. Of course the basis upon which that system relied was the belief that contagious persons could be readily identified. Much of what we seem to be doing now is based on the belief in asymptomatic or presymptomatic persons driving the pandemic, and the assumption that everyone is infected unless they can prove otherwise.”

      That’s an excellent, thoughtfull statement that underlines the basic premise fueling the “opinions” of the moral crusaders who prefer to unreflectively attempt to insult as being selfish and bully others into thinking and acting as they do for no other reason than the fear that drives their need be “not” bad pennies.

      Much of the argument or lack of any sound one on the part of the moral crusaders for their billy-clubbing of non-conformists ignores the corellative efficacy of people wearing masks and maintaining proper distances from one another indoors or on public transportation actually has tremendously had on preventing the spread of covid as well as the Flu; which incidentally, its numbers having been historically low since those preventive measures were put in place. That these measures, were and continue to be effectively implemented contradicts the coercive propagation of the notion that being vaccinated is the ONLY means with which to avoid and or stop the spread of the virus. And because of this fact of there being more than one means with which to prevent conracting the virus, there can be no sound justification for the government to legally mandate anyone to get one or to be digitally branded to prove it.

      And to those who prefer to make absolutist assumptions about others based on their obvious limited understanding of, not only what constitutes a free and democratic society regarding legislatively inacted individual rights, but also the causes of the majority of all those lying in grave yards that one occassionally drives by, maybe they ought to before admonishing others to do so, investigate the predominant causes for them ending up there before or after 1920 and not including all of the wars that mankind has engaged in: Death by cancer (before it was medically identifiable as such); strokes; heart and other severe organ ailments along with respiratory illnesses account for the prdominent causes of death in our modernized world that is charaterized by its high levels of living standards and sedentary habits like driving an automobile which is estimated to be a much greater cause of death than that person contracting, let alone dying from covid. Then we have our deaths due to narcotic usage and the horrendous homicide rates in the US particularly.

      Tens of thousands of people have been dying anually from the Flu for a long time and no government has yet mandated that people wear masks and or maintain social distancing, let alone be vaccinated against their will to prevent its spread. The histrionics which allows certain individuals to be lured into engaging in moral self-righteousness along with admonishing and or preaching to others due to their proclaimed good intentions regarding this most unforunate health crisis, that is as a result of it’s politicization, morphed into a devisive moral issue is unfortunately not unlike the hyperbolic cries of catastrophy descending onto the palnet because of it’s rising temperatures.

      Those individuals, who are sceptics of this line of thinking are likewise regelated to the looney-bin with an assortment of personal invectives attributed to them by people who possess profound convictions indicative in their profuse opinions along with being berefft of the other relative facts and the sound logic and research responsible for establishing them to contradict the propaganda of fear and loathing with which to manipulate public opinion. Such people think they are and want to be right at all cost to that process in spite of the empirical evidence that proves that tens of thousands of more people die from afflictions due to cold weather than they do as a result of hot weather.

      No matter what the issue, the mainstream media and its bank rollers and partisan talking head scientist are and will continue to search for more effective ways of mandating the human mind to not think about any issue beyond what those possesing abundant prowess in information dissemination have determined for their loyal followers as an absoltue truth. Thankfully the efforts to that effect are being met with dutiful struggle to prevent that usurping of individual liberty in, free and democratically run societies.
      And the international protests supporty that effort at keeping such intellectual hegeomony.

      1. ….And the international protests support that effort at keeping such intellectual hegeomony at bay.

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