Note this is specific to England. Other countries in the UK are following their own course -- the Scottish government agreed in principle to introduce vaccine passports as of a week ago and will require them for entry to large venues from October 1st:
The NHS is a fully devolved issue, with separate NHS organizations in Wales, England, Northern Ireland, reporting to the devolved parliaments and legislative assemblies, and Scotland, leading to differing outcomes in handling COVID19. Vaccination and COVID19 control is not quite as crazily politicized as it is in the USA, but the conservative (right wing) government in England is handling it rather differently from the SNP/Green (left wing) government in Scotland.
This is very true. I personally find it mad that the UK is the nation with the highest covid infection rate in western europe, with ~30k new cases/day. Long covid is a real, debilitating condition and if anything is going to affect the young -- who are least vaccinated -- the most, thus creating a long-term disease burden and morbidity cost on both those individuals and the country as a whole. Ignoring the human cost of this, from an economic point of view alone, surely this is mad! -- it's very much not in the national interest.
I'd therefore naïvely think that the integrated burden would be greater than the short, sharp dip that comes with more conservative measures -- but this government is rolling ahead full-steam with pretending that the disease isn't there and telling us all to "get on with our lives". That makes me feel deeply, deeply unhappy. One in ~70 people nationally have covid at the moment. Nightclubs, etc, typically contain far more than 70 people!
This is hopeful news, because the passport plans completely debased the practical, pro-social, and even altruistic aspects of the vaccine program.
However, provincial and federal politicians in Canada have also very cynically lied about this in the recent past, where they said they were against them and they wouldn't happen, to making snap announcements that they were implementing them with hard deadlines, so let's see how this plays out.
> "I've never liked the idea of saying to people you must show your papers or something to do what is just an everyday activity, but we were right to properly look at it.
We regularly show papers for everyday activities - library card for reading books, ID for a hotel stay, driving license for driving a car, ID to pickup a parcel etc.
> We regularly show papers for everyday activities - library card for reading books, ID for a hotel stay, driving license for driving a car, ID to pickup a parcel etc.
This is a classic demonstration that "slippery slope" isn't a fallacy.
First you need a driving license. Privacy conscious people objected. You don't need to show your driving license to drive, was the response, only if you break traffic laws or get into an accident. There's no one using it to track everywhere you go or anything.
Then comes the vaccine passport. Privacy conscious people object. Now the response is, hey, you already have to show your driving license if you get pulled over for speeding, what's the difference? And you don't have to show your vaccine passport if you, um, never go outside again.
Meanwhile we now have ALPR cameras recording the location history of every vehicle on the roads. Because some slopes are actually slippery.
I'm confused. The NHS app already has QR codes to show proof of vaccination. I've been to public events that required the QR code to get in (though I don't think they scanned it.) You can generate new codes whenever you like and they are valid for 30 days if, for example, you wanted to print it out instead of taking your phone.
Just goes to show how weak this current government is. Polls show 60% approve of the idea, with 27% opposed. Yet they still can't get their own policy done due to infighting in the tory party.
> Polls show 60% approve of the idea, with 27% opposed.
Tyranny of the majority. Just because 60% support some crazy idea doesn't make it right.
Also the average american thinks if they catch covid the chances of dying are 10%[0]. For most age groups that is 100 or 1000 times off. People are wildly off on their estimates of how bad covid is. How can the average person make an informed, rational decision about public health policy if they think Covid is Black Plague v2.0?
So for the two sibling comments. This article is clearly about nightclubs and events.
"Plans to introduce vaccine passports for access into nightclubs and large events in England will not go ahead, the health secretary has said."
"Under the scheme, people would have been required to show proof - whether of double vaccination, a negative Covid test or finishing self-isolating after a positive PCR test - in order to gain entry to clubs and other crowded events."
"The Night Time Industries Association had said the plans could have crippled the industry and led to nightclubs facing discrimination cases."
Showing proof of age so you can drink alcohol and participate in the sexualized activities at a club are nowhere near in the same ballpark as "paper's please" tyranny in order to participate in society.
Don’t worry everyone. The unilateral powers created by our government during covid is a one time thing.
Surely covid will one day “go away”, and with it the surveillance state will dismantle their powers and stop trying to control what their citizens think and do!
I haven’t seen much about this but I assume the passport systems are a potentially huge security risk. The ones I’ve seen require personal identifying information (yet again) which you know is stored in a new database (again).
> which you know is stored in a new database (again).
The (european) vaccination certificates include all necessary information in a QR code that is stored locally, either digitally in an app or as actual print-out of the QR code. You only have to show an id card to proof that this QR code belongs to you then (it also encodes your full name and date of birth for making the connection).
At least in the UK the vaccine passports are made available through the NHS App, and stored AFAIK the same way any other health information on your person is stored already. At least they show up the same way like all other healthcare appointments, prescription s, etc. The only unique things are the QR codes to "export" that information - the validity of this is not checked against a (separate) database to my knowledge.
Other countries that have nationwide systems should have been able to do something similar - of course there's a good chance they didn't, but that's really not an argument against Covid passports but against bad security practices.
The downward spiral has been observed for long time now. Civil liberties aren't really important unless it's some nebulous discriminated class... Freedom of speech is just about government, not general civil liberty. Gun rights were relevant are not important. And so on...
As they should be, considering that the vaccines do not stop people from getting infected and infecting others. Making sure there are only vaccinated people in a bar does not mean the people inside can’t get infected so this measure does not help achieve that goal.
Vaccinated are actually at a lot lower risk to catch the disease and even less likely to actually develop symptoms and severe cases.
Keeping unvaccinated out protects them from those who can spread it unknowingly.
> vaccines do not stop people from getting infected and infecting others. ... does not mean the people inside can’t get infected so this measure does not help achieve that goal.
This is absolutist thinking - "people can still get infected, so this does not help at all" - this not true in the slightest:
"it can still happen" is not the same "as it happens at the same rate as before". And "It's not perfect" isn't the same as "does not help".
vaccination reduces the rate of infection, a lot, so it does help, a lot. None of this is binary, thinking in absolutes will lead you to false conclusions.
Clearly only true solution to stop spread is permanent lockdown. And ban bars, restaurants, events and any sort of gatherings forever. I believe all pro-vaccine people already agree that no sacrifice of freedoms is too big for greater good.
After all, why wouldn't they support keeping the vulnerable safe? Cost is only small sacrifice in bodily autonomy and clearly most effective thing to do.
Well, if the large majority of your population is already vaccinated, I guess these passports could potentially be dismissed, if masks are still mandatory, but for some countries - like Portugal where we have +80% of the pop. vaccinated - the main concern are tourists that completely disregard any etiquette or measures in place.
So I think keeping passports is a good measure, not perfect due to breakthrough infections, still better than nothing.
The thing that people seem to be ignoring in all of this is that people like having power.
The vaccines are helpful to the recipient, but unless you are successful at completely shutting down travel to the rest of the world: not really that helpful to the people who haven't taken them. In fact, there is an argument for how over-vaccinating will be harmful to the unvaccinated.
If you're vaccinated, you can still get and transmit covid. You just don't get as sick. The vaccine protects you.
So why these vaccine mandates? Vaccine passports? Etc.
Because people simply enjoy the act of getting to tell others what to do. Anybody who has ever interacted with an HOA will be familiar with this.
The data shows that these do not have a positive effect, but the people enacting them enjoy it, and the people who have found themselves on the enforcment side of the political divide enjoy the feeling of righteousness they experience because of them.
I can’t reply to everybody making the same incorrect point. Here is the graph of Texas’s hospital utilization: https://covid-texas.csullender.com/
(Luckily Texas gives us great data!).
The graph here you are looking for is the one that shows the percentage of staffed beds and icu beds occupied. Notice that it is entirely flat.
Here’s a really interesting statistic that suggests even less effectiveness of these control measures: the vaccines appear to have had no effect on hospital utilization.
It's completely and incontrovertibly bullshit that vaccines don't help unvaccinated people.
Vaccines drastically reduce hospitalisation. That frees up medical resources for everyone, especially those who aren't vaccinated and those that need care.
We are already seeing medical procedures get postponed and hospital staff being pushed at the breaking point. The help to your community of being vaccinated is simply huge.
All the data suggests that vaccines significantly reduce transmission, both by decreasing the likelihood of infection and onward transmission from vaccinated individuals.
Additionally, anything that incentivizes more people to get the vaccine will result in higher uptake, which benefits everyone in terms of lower overall spread and hospital usage.
You are 100% wrong. The purpose of mandating the vaccine is to keep people from dying, particularly older, immune compromised people and kids who can't get the vaccine just yet. I'm tired of this damn limbo of somewhere in the middle. If you don't want to get a vaccine then don't work for one of the employers that will now be required to make sure their workers are immunized. Your rights end at the end of your nose. No one is going to come looking for you to drag you out to the street and get immunized. However if you want to participate with the rest of us then get vaccinated. Texas is currently a shit show of overcrowded hospitals, voter suppression laws, and pro-birther (but not pro life) people trying to install their theocracy. I know because I live here.
For me the major point of vaccinating others is ensuring hospitals are not overwhelmed and have enough capacity to treat other patients and perform elective procedures.
> The graph here you are looking for is the one that shows the percentage of staffed beds and icu beds occupied. Notice that it is entirely flat.
Compare June to September, total staffed beds is about even, total ICU beds grew somewhat, and usage of both jumped from about 80% to 88% for overall beds, and 90ish to 96% for ICUs (which is a bigger increase in use than it might seem because capacity increased)
If overall use increased 10% and covid users are 20% of overall and 40% of ICU, up from maybe 5% and 10%, it seems there are a lot of non-covid users whose care is being delayed or denied because of covid. There's some room for misleading statistical information, such as ICU patients in for something else that happen to have asymptomatic covid and are only tested because of other patients, but the difference in stats seems large enough to ignore that. Stats I've heard are that the vast majority of hospitalized covid patients in most states had not been vacinated, so it does seem useful to the person taking them, and by reducing the overall hospitalization rate, seem to have kept Texas within hospital capacity, if barely (I haven't heard stories of Texas hospitals running triage and tents in parking garage like some other states)
> If you're vaccinated, you can still get and transmit covid. You just don't get as sick. The vaccine protects
you.
The vaccine reduces the chance you can get and transmit covid. 40-60% protection against infection, and even when there is a breakthrough case viral load declines faster than in an unvaccinated person meaning less chance and time to spread the virus to others.
> So why these vaccine mandates? Vaccine passports? Etc.
Because people simply enjoy the act of getting to tell others what to do. Anybody who has ever interacted with an HOA will be familiar with this.
No, it’s because lots of people are literally dying. An HOA arguing with you over the color of your garage door or the height of your lawn is, at most, trying to protect property values or as you say just being a busybody.
> The graph here you are looking for is the one that shows the percentage of staffed beds and icu beds occupied. Notice that it is entirely flat.
So why did hospitals declare that they have no ICU beds available and that they are sending patients out of state?
> At least 53 Texas hospitals have no available ICU capacity, according to numbers reported to the federal government during the week ending Aug. 5. In Austin, five hospitals were at or above 90% of their ICU capacity during the same period, with two reporting no available ICU beds
> If you're vaccinated, you can still get and transmit covid. You just don't get as sick. The vaccine protects you.
While you still can transmit COVID-19 if you're vaccinated against it, it's far less likely (the time during which you can transmit the disease is far shorter).
So while your statement might be technically correct, it is also very misleading.
> In fact, there is an argument for how over-vaccinating will be harmful to the unvaccinated.
What is over-vaccinating (and in a pandemic, no less)? And what is that argument you speak of?
> If you're vaccinated, you can still get and transmit covid.
If you are vaccinated you are less likely to get COVID, less likely to spread it at peak (except, apparently, with Delta) while you have it, and have a shorter contagious period (even with Delta).
So, yes, you can still get and spread it, but you are significantly less likely to.
> If you're vaccinated, you can still get and transmit covid.
I can win the lottery, but I probably won't. Don't think of it as black or white, binary, can/can't. Unless you talk about the probability of getting and transmitting COVID, and how vaccination reduces these, you will be making nonsensical statements like the one above.
Wouldn’t another reason be to reduce cost? It’s expensive to treat covid patients and the vaccine is proven to reduce the incidents of hospitalization. But I’m willing to forgo all vaccine mandates, mask mandates, etc if we can all agree that unvaccinated have to pay for their own treatment or buy bespoke covid insurance.
[+] [-] cstross|4 years ago|reply
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-vaccine-passports-requir...
The NHS is a fully devolved issue, with separate NHS organizations in Wales, England, Northern Ireland, reporting to the devolved parliaments and legislative assemblies, and Scotland, leading to differing outcomes in handling COVID19. Vaccination and COVID19 control is not quite as crazily politicized as it is in the USA, but the conservative (right wing) government in England is handling it rather differently from the SNP/Green (left wing) government in Scotland.
[+] [-] azalemeth|4 years ago|reply
I'd therefore naïvely think that the integrated burden would be greater than the short, sharp dip that comes with more conservative measures -- but this government is rolling ahead full-steam with pretending that the disease isn't there and telling us all to "get on with our lives". That makes me feel deeply, deeply unhappy. One in ~70 people nationally have covid at the moment. Nightclubs, etc, typically contain far more than 70 people!
[+] [-] thinkingemote|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] motohagiography|4 years ago|reply
However, provincial and federal politicians in Canada have also very cynically lied about this in the recent past, where they said they were against them and they wouldn't happen, to making snap announcements that they were implementing them with hard deadlines, so let's see how this plays out.
[+] [-] kQq9oHeAz6wLLS|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tchalla|4 years ago|reply
We regularly show papers for everyday activities - library card for reading books, ID for a hotel stay, driving license for driving a car, ID to pickup a parcel etc.
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|4 years ago|reply
This is a classic demonstration that "slippery slope" isn't a fallacy.
First you need a driving license. Privacy conscious people objected. You don't need to show your driving license to drive, was the response, only if you break traffic laws or get into an accident. There's no one using it to track everywhere you go or anything.
Then comes the vaccine passport. Privacy conscious people object. Now the response is, hey, you already have to show your driving license if you get pulled over for speeding, what's the difference? And you don't have to show your vaccine passport if you, um, never go outside again.
Meanwhile we now have ALPR cameras recording the location history of every vehicle on the roads. Because some slopes are actually slippery.
[+] [-] roenxi|4 years ago|reply
Proving an unrelated fact about yourself solely because the government thinks so is a different thing.
[+] [-] gorgoiler|4 years ago|reply
Wasn't this the passport scheme?
[+] [-] NomeChomsky|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bengale|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spookthesunset|4 years ago|reply
Tyranny of the majority. Just because 60% support some crazy idea doesn't make it right.
Also the average american thinks if they catch covid the chances of dying are 10%[0]. For most age groups that is 100 or 1000 times off. People are wildly off on their estimates of how bad covid is. How can the average person make an informed, rational decision about public health policy if they think Covid is Black Plague v2.0?
[0] https://covid19pulse.usc.edu/
[+] [-] reillyse|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reillyse|4 years ago|reply
"Under the scheme, people would have been required to show proof - whether of double vaccination, a negative Covid test or finishing self-isolating after a positive PCR test - in order to gain entry to clubs and other crowded events."
"The Night Time Industries Association had said the plans could have crippled the industry and led to nightclubs facing discrimination cases."
[+] [-] throwawayfear|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spookthesunset|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woopwoop|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ekaros|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jjgreen|4 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toYL4jjl4q4
[+] [-] ed25519FUUU|4 years ago|reply
Surely covid will one day “go away”, and with it the surveillance state will dismantle their powers and stop trying to control what their citizens think and do!
[+] [-] refurb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _Microft|4 years ago|reply
The (european) vaccination certificates include all necessary information in a QR code that is stored locally, either digitally in an app or as actual print-out of the QR code. You only have to show an id card to proof that this QR code belongs to you then (it also encodes your full name and date of birth for making the connection).
[+] [-] inflagranti|4 years ago|reply
Other countries that have nationwide systems should have been able to do something similar - of course there's a good chance they didn't, but that's really not an argument against Covid passports but against bad security practices.
[+] [-] mynameishere|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pessimizer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commandlinefan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ekaros|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawayfear|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eddof13|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tinus_hn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _Microft|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SideburnsOfDoom|4 years ago|reply
This is absolutist thinking - "people can still get infected, so this does not help at all" - this not true in the slightest:
"it can still happen" is not the same "as it happens at the same rate as before". And "It's not perfect" isn't the same as "does not help".
vaccination reduces the rate of infection, a lot, so it does help, a lot. None of this is binary, thinking in absolutes will lead you to false conclusions.
[+] [-] elcomet|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmull|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ekaros|4 years ago|reply
After all, why wouldn't they support keeping the vulnerable safe? Cost is only small sacrifice in bodily autonomy and clearly most effective thing to do.
[+] [-] libertine|4 years ago|reply
So I think keeping passports is a good measure, not perfect due to breakthrough infections, still better than nothing.
[+] [-] thepasswordis|4 years ago|reply
The vaccines are helpful to the recipient, but unless you are successful at completely shutting down travel to the rest of the world: not really that helpful to the people who haven't taken them. In fact, there is an argument for how over-vaccinating will be harmful to the unvaccinated.
If you're vaccinated, you can still get and transmit covid. You just don't get as sick. The vaccine protects you.
So why these vaccine mandates? Vaccine passports? Etc.
Because people simply enjoy the act of getting to tell others what to do. Anybody who has ever interacted with an HOA will be familiar with this.
The data shows that these do not have a positive effect, but the people enacting them enjoy it, and the people who have found themselves on the enforcment side of the political divide enjoy the feeling of righteousness they experience because of them.
I can’t reply to everybody making the same incorrect point. Here is the graph of Texas’s hospital utilization: https://covid-texas.csullender.com/
(Luckily Texas gives us great data!).
The graph here you are looking for is the one that shows the percentage of staffed beds and icu beds occupied. Notice that it is entirely flat.
Here’s a really interesting statistic that suggests even less effectiveness of these control measures: the vaccines appear to have had no effect on hospital utilization.
[+] [-] sudosysgen|4 years ago|reply
Vaccines drastically reduce hospitalisation. That frees up medical resources for everyone, especially those who aren't vaccinated and those that need care.
We are already seeing medical procedures get postponed and hospital staff being pushed at the breaking point. The help to your community of being vaccinated is simply huge.
[+] [-] bequanna|4 years ago|reply
The hour long daily briefings rarely contain any new information and are nothing but pure ego and attention seeking.
Exactly like a movie star whose time is passing, you should bet they will do whatever it takes to stay in the spotlight and stay relevant.
[+] [-] Straw|4 years ago|reply
Additionally, anything that incentivizes more people to get the vaccine will result in higher uptake, which benefits everyone in terms of lower overall spread and hospital usage.
[+] [-] stjohnswarts|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mapme|4 years ago|reply
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2021/...
[+] [-] junon|4 years ago|reply
This isn't true, though.
[+] [-] toast0|4 years ago|reply
Compare June to September, total staffed beds is about even, total ICU beds grew somewhat, and usage of both jumped from about 80% to 88% for overall beds, and 90ish to 96% for ICUs (which is a bigger increase in use than it might seem because capacity increased)
If overall use increased 10% and covid users are 20% of overall and 40% of ICU, up from maybe 5% and 10%, it seems there are a lot of non-covid users whose care is being delayed or denied because of covid. There's some room for misleading statistical information, such as ICU patients in for something else that happen to have asymptomatic covid and are only tested because of other patients, but the difference in stats seems large enough to ignore that. Stats I've heard are that the vast majority of hospitalized covid patients in most states had not been vacinated, so it does seem useful to the person taking them, and by reducing the overall hospitalization rate, seem to have kept Texas within hospital capacity, if barely (I haven't heard stories of Texas hospitals running triage and tents in parking garage like some other states)
[+] [-] javagram|4 years ago|reply
The vaccine reduces the chance you can get and transmit covid. 40-60% protection against infection, and even when there is a breakthrough case viral load declines faster than in an unvaccinated person meaning less chance and time to spread the virus to others.
> So why these vaccine mandates? Vaccine passports? Etc. Because people simply enjoy the act of getting to tell others what to do. Anybody who has ever interacted with an HOA will be familiar with this.
No, it’s because lots of people are literally dying. An HOA arguing with you over the color of your garage door or the height of your lawn is, at most, trying to protect property values or as you say just being a busybody.
[+] [-] htkgigktmrnnr|4 years ago|reply
So why did hospitals declare that they have no ICU beds available and that they are sending patients out of state?
> At least 53 Texas hospitals have no available ICU capacity, according to numbers reported to the federal government during the week ending Aug. 5. In Austin, five hospitals were at or above 90% of their ICU capacity during the same period, with two reporting no available ICU beds
https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/10/coronavirus-texas-ho...
[+] [-] perlgeek|4 years ago|reply
While you still can transmit COVID-19 if you're vaccinated against it, it's far less likely (the time during which you can transmit the disease is far shorter).
So while your statement might be technically correct, it is also very misleading.
> In fact, there is an argument for how over-vaccinating will be harmful to the unvaccinated.
What is over-vaccinating (and in a pandemic, no less)? And what is that argument you speak of?
[+] [-] dragonwriter|4 years ago|reply
If you are vaccinated you are less likely to get COVID, less likely to spread it at peak (except, apparently, with Delta) while you have it, and have a shorter contagious period (even with Delta).
So, yes, you can still get and spread it, but you are significantly less likely to.
[+] [-] SideburnsOfDoom|4 years ago|reply
I can win the lottery, but I probably won't. Don't think of it as black or white, binary, can/can't. Unless you talk about the probability of getting and transmitting COVID, and how vaccination reduces these, you will be making nonsensical statements like the one above.
[+] [-] xphilter|4 years ago|reply