Anticipating Issues with 'Vaccine Passports' & Why They May Do Harm
by Anthony Arnold
April 2021
Recently, we asked readers on our Facebook page a question about ‘vaccine passports’. We were trying to see how many people would support them, and under what conditions they might do so. As responses started to come in, I was a little surprised, when I discovered I was the only respondent who expressed skepticism about the idea.
It’s not that I think I’m the only person who feels this way. I don’t think (quite) that highly of myself. And it’s not that I’m against getting the vaccine. I already have my appointment set for next month, and have encouraged everyone I know to get a vaccine as soon as possible.
But, I was genuinely caught off-guard that no one expressed any concern over the risks of this sort of ‘proof-before-entry system’.
To be clear, I don’t disagree with the concept of proving that you’ve been vaccinated. We all want to be safe and healthy. We want our friends, loved ones, and broader communities to be safe from the disease that’s been ravaging the world for the past year; and we want to encourage those who are reluctant to get vaccinated to change their minds, so they, too, will be safe.
None of that is bad. But vaccine passports, as they are currently being proposed, carry significant downsides. Instead of ignoring those downsides, we need to understand how they may impact us.
The Cost
Whenever you’re getting ready to try something risky, there’s that moment when you ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen?” If the risk isn’t too great, then you go ahead and do it.
Public policy is like that. It’s a constant series of questions, a constant management of risks and rewards. How high is too high for taxes, if I want to pay for stuff? If I move money from policing to community support, will crime go up? It’s almost always about trade-offs. Therefore, before I explain my problems with the policy, I want to make it clear why it’s worth talking about, at all.
In a big picture sense, the point of a vaccine passport would be to restrict the movement of the unvaccinated. This could include restrictions on the right to work, and restrictions on your right to socialize. The way to avoid these various restrictions would be to have proof that you were vaccinated.
But, those are actually enormous consequences, much too great to overlook. When you strip someone of their right to work, then you are depriving them of the ability to provide for themselves or their families. What if the person loses their job, and as a consequence they lose their home? Is this a risk we’re willing to take?
What if they have kids? You would be imposing harm on kids due to the actions of their parents. Is that a good risk?
We all know the feelings of frustration, anger, and helplessness that hung over us during the height of the pandemic last year; and because of that, I have reservations about implementing a vaccine passport that would essentially do the same thing.
Now, I know the comeback to all of this: ‘If they just get vaccinated, they’ll have the passport, and none of that will happen to them.’ But, that’s where I think this conversation starts to break down.
A Couple of Obvious Issues
The early passport plans, including the one that New York has already rolled out, are built around the usage of an app that would verify your vaccine status. Now, it’s true that there are other methods, such as having cards or printouts, that would accomplish the goal. But these programs are being built around the usage of apps. Paper solutions, while possible, would be a lot slower and may cause some to question their legitimacy.
If the plan is to use apps, then that means confronting the fact that nearly 20% of U.S. adults don’t own a smartphone -- at all. This means that between 50-60 millions adults are automatically denied access, right off the top.
As a consequence, this issue isn’t equally distributed. Adults over age 65, lower income adults, adults without a college degree, and people living in rural areas all have lower rates of smartphone ownership.
Moreover, access to the vaccine itself has been really low. At current rates, we won’t reach 50% vaccination until the middle of June. So, a passport program that rolls out in the early part of June could be locking out over half the nation, despite them not having done anything wrong.
It’s not as if people don’t want the vaccine. Right now, we have people waiting for the opportunity to just get in line, in some communities.
And what of people who live in states that aren’t distributing their vaccine well? Currently, there are places where the population won’t be vaccinated until 2022. That’s through no fault of the residents who live there, but they would be suffering the consequences.
While everybody else would be free to move around, some people would be potentially frozen in place for months. They’d be left behind while the rest of society moved on. And I really want to highlight that this doesn’t just include the people who are refusing to get vaccinated. There could be very real collateral damage to millions of other people too.
Whenever there are big ideas, there’s typically big risks, as well. We shouldn’t wait for problems to emerge, before attempting to scramble around and solve them. Instead, we should try to anticipate them, and have solutions ready to go; which is what I’m really asking for here. Our discussions and understanding of policy need to evolve beyond simplistic notions of ‘good and bad’. The world of public policy just isn’t that simple.