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England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

124 points by Kaibeezy 5y ago

cstross 5y ago
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: https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-vaccine-passports-required-in-scotland-for-entry-to-large-venues-from-1-october-12403321 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 5y ago
  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!
  - thinkingemote 5y ago
    The country has one of the highest vaccination levels in the world also.
  - MatteoFrigo 5y ago
    You have the right to be unhappy. However, looking at the latest data from the UK at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1016465/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_36.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/..., it is not clear whether pushing for more vaccines will change the situation in any way that makes you happy. For example, that report says that 97% of the blood donors has some kind of antibodies, either from vaccine or previous infection. This number is almost 100% for older people. Maybe blood donors are not representative of the population, but if they are, it's not obvious that the extra 3% buys you anything, even if you could capture it. For some age groups (Table 4), the vaccinated are more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated. I am sure there are good reasons for this, e.g. people more at risk may be more likely to be vaccinated, but whatever the reason is, the vaccine does not seem to be powerful enough to compensate for the extra risk.
    - quotemstr 5y ago
      > pushing for more vaccines will change the situation in any way that makes you happy. Given that even highly-vaccinated localities like Iceland (74% vaccinated) keep seeing waves of COVID cases and that COVID waves peak and decline without countries achieving the 90% rate vaccine proponents suggest as the threshold for herd immunity, we have to begin seriously questioning the public health case for mandatory universal vaccination. I wish more people would think critically about this issue instead of adopting an aggressive attitude of enforced conformity to an orthodoxy that doesn't appear to have all its facts lined up. Looking objectively at experiences of countries around the world, one is forced to conclude that in the case of COVID, with the non-sterilizing vaccines currently available, vaccine passports are neither sufficient nor necessary for safeguarding public health and present serious challenges to privacy, civil liberties, and the rule of law.
      - dia80 5y ago
        Vaccines cut severity of disease and thus the societal burden of infection. While I agree these measures are potentially draconian it's wrong to say they convey no benefit.
  - Proven 5y ago
    You have the right to not go to nightclubs, or get your 3rd shot and double-mask before you do, if you like. What exactly are you mad at? That the government won't send its goons to weld your doors?
  - paul_f 5y ago
    I think we are long past "short" anything related to COVID. It is now clearly endemic and will persist indefinitely. People need to make their own decisions on how to protect themselves and get on with their lives.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      So should we invest in vastly increasing hospital staffing and facilities because the current ICU loads are the new normal?
      - kryogen1c 5y ago
        why not? it seems absurd to think that at no point in the future will there be infectious endemic diseases. hospital infrastructure hardly seems like the wrong thing to overbuild.
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        We already spend a lot on healthcare as it is, more so here in the USA than in countries with universal healthcare. Should we go from spending 17.7% of our GDP to 30%? Just because some people aren’t interested getting a vaccine?
        pessimizer 5y ago
        The USA doesn't spend the amount it does on healthcare out of necessity, it does it because of graft. If we're willing to spend twice as much as everyone else for no reason, why not four times as much?
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        So? If healthcare needs rise, what is to assume that the graft won’t rise with it? The same people against vaccines are also against universal healthcare (at least in the states), so these problems will just keep being compounded.
  - NoblePublius 5y ago
    How do you distinguish between the symptoms of “long covid” from the effects of being locked inside for a year? There have been over a billion covid infections globally (assume confirmed cases are 1/5 infections, which is a low estimate according to John’s Hopkins) so if “long covid” is so real, where are all these sufferers? If 1% have long covid, there should be at least ten million sufferers.
    - logicalmonster 5y ago
      Before Covid started, when a person had a particularly bad flu, it sometimes happened that they'd feel like crap and weak for a good long while after recovering: sometimes for weeks and months. I'm not completely certain about what "long-covid" is, but this phenomenon could be a combination of this known effect as well as the after effects of the inhuman living conditions society is forcing on people: unnatural social isolation, constant media induced fear and stress, lack of sunshine and exercise, bad diets (because there's fewer fun entertainment options), etc.
      - NoblePublius 5y ago
        The official symptoms list of Long Covid, according to Mayo Clinic, includes “depression” and “headache and muscle pain” and “confusion.” This is lockdown-driven depression. If the virus had lingering physical effects, there would be tens of millions of sufferers seeking treatment, and there arent.
  - hcykb 5y ago
    So don't go out yourself, but don't tell others what they can do.
  - shucksley 5y ago
    the CDC recognizes long covid, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/..., but not necessarily as a result of mild infections. it is also worth noting that the CDC, so far, does not recognize vaccine-induced long haul syndrome as a real syndrome. edit: re vaccinating the young, you need to pay special attn to the risks of myocarditis and pericarditis, which can potentially outweigh the benefits of the vaccine. vaccine advocates already made this mistake of ignoring vaccine risks with young women / GBS previously in the context of another vaccine and it would be a tragedy to needlessly maim the young with these new innovative vaccines. edit: dear creeps who are downvoting me without a reason, please take note of another HN submission at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...
  - commandlinefan 5y ago
    > short, sharp dip Short? It’s been a year and a half with no end in sight.
  - eynsham 5y ago
    I think of restrictions as falling into three buckets— - restrictions we could put up with ~forever, - restrictions we could put up with temporarily while waiting for something (e.g., vaccines), - restrictions we could put up with temporarily to mitigate some disaster by delay tactics (e.g. March lockdown.) Now the question is what further restrictions now would do. I think there are some things we should definitely encourage as not very intrusive (especially when it’s encouragement not law)—e.g., using FFP stuff rather than surgical/cloth masks in crowded spaces when possible, ventilation, &c. I don’t think that we’re really waiting for anything though. We are not throwing everything at getting better vaccines. Nor are we going to massively boost vaccine uptake. (Maybe we should wait for the 12-15 category I suppose, since then we’d be closer to herd immunity.) Finally, the NHS is not imminently going to be inundated. This might change in a few weeks. But delay right now isn’t necessary to avoid a March 2020/December 2020 apocalypse. So in my view restrictions now would merely delay the inevitable since nothing would actually change. This is in contrast to last year when we were waiting for the enormous breakthrough of vaccines, or in February/March as we vaccinated the vast majority of adults. I do think it would be a plausible strategy to dampen things for a month whilst vaccinating those aged 12-15 though—I suspect vaccination would do nearly all the work there though. (On a tangent, I don’t see why we don’t just administer the first dose to them anyway—even if the second is too risky the first is much safer.)
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  The purchase (and maybe rollout?) of the vaccines was done at the nation level rather than individual country.
  - lampington 5y ago
    Purchase was national, rollout per-country (though they did all do it pretty much the same way, with broadly similar results)
NomeChomsky 5y ago
Good. There is no evidence to support them. You can still transmit the virus whilst double vaccinated. They do not slow spread only hospitalisation.
- sofixa 5y ago
  There is, the number of vaccinations in France jumped remarkably after vaccine passports were made mandatory for cinemas, theatres, restaurants, etc. Considering that's the main goal of such policies, it seems like a success. And yes, the main point is to limit hospitalisations, because they're the main limiting factor ( at least in France, but probably in most other developed countries as well).
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    The same brand of ‘successes’ can be achieved by banning alcohol, tobacco, fast food or whatever vice you want.
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      I’m not sure if I would consider the vice of drinking alcohol quite the same as the vice of infecting and potentially killing other people.
      - Ekaros 5y ago
        I think alcohol might be even more dangerous to others than being unvaccinated. Violent drug users are well known ending up in fights and even causing death or permanent damage when they attack randomly at others during night. Or even kill them sometimes. So I think we should apply the new standard to it and ban it totally.
        nobodyandproud 5y ago
        And we have laws to hold people accountable when under the influence, they do something bad and affect someone else. That’s a fantastic idea: Start holding the unvaccinated criminally responsible, if they’re the likely point of infection for someone else. Thanks for the idea.
tinus_hn 5y ago
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.
- elcomet 5y ago
  It makes sense if vaccine reduces infection rate.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  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.
  - tinus_hn 5y ago
    Well, of course it’s mostly about sacrifices other people have to make. You know, ‘I don’t go to festivals so I don’t mind if they’re banned’. But ‘it’s inconvenient if my children are quarantined from school so that should be lenient’.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      The benefits of society from in person education are so much higher than the benefit of music festivals that your comparison is absolutely ridiculous. A better comparison would be churches and bars.
  - WorkLobster 5y ago
    This is a ridiculous straw-man take and you know it. Please aim for helpful discussion instead of empty sarcasm.
    - 5y ago
libertine 5y ago
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.
- ddxxdd 5y ago
  Last time I checked, the top 3 countries in terms of vaccination rates are also the top 3 countries in terms of number of active covid cases. Israel is #1 in vaccination rates and #1 in daily cases.
  - martin8412 5y ago
    That must have been a while ago, because Israel is nowhere near top in vaccination rate anymore. They had a fast rollout, but are now stuck at around 61%.. Meanwhile, western Europe is around 80-90% vaccinated
    - maxerickson 5y ago
      https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=FRA https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=FRA shows more like 60%-70% for the total population (I turned on more countries than France). Are your numbers percent of adults or including people that have recovered from infection or something?
      - jvzr 5y ago
        Government numbers in France show 80.2% today ("The figure gives the share of the population over the age of 12 that are fully vaccinated (all required doses") We crossed 60% on July 29, and 70% on August 20
        5y ago
gorgoiler 5y ago
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. Wasn't this the passport scheme?
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  tbh the document and qr code are trivial to generate and forge from what i remember. I'm not condoning it i'm just pointing out its weakness.
  - tonfa 5y ago
    They're not based on public key crypto like in the rest of the world?
    - isoskeles 5y ago
      They are. They’re trivial to create with your own issuer but not to forge an existing issuer, unless their private key is leaked.
      - fy20 5y ago
        And what's the point of that? Aren't the verification apps going to check the issuer?
        isoskeles 5y ago
        Verification apps should check the issuer. But you can issue and sign your own vaccine codes trivially. Some apps will go a step further to check that the issuer is “trusted.” For example, there is a good list of issuers considered trusted here: https://github.com/the-commons-project/vci-directory/blob/main/vci-issuers.json https://github.com/the-commons-project/vci-directory/blob/ma... The most popular reader app I know of will mark issuers that are not on this list as “Partially-verified.” I’m not going to get too deep into this because it’s clear that HN is, for some reason, very antagonistic toward any discussion on the matter unless some correct permutation of words is used. Nonetheless, I’ve researched this quite a bit. Anyone can make and issue their own SMART Health Card.
jjgreen 5y ago
No point now, who would go to a nightclub now that we know there is a risk that you find yourself dancing with Michael Gove https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toYL4jjl4q4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toYL4jjl4q4
refurb 5y ago
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).
- _Microft 5y ago
  > 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).
  - jjgreen 5y ago
    Wouldn't work in the UK since we don't have ID cards.
    - _Microft 5y ago
      How do you identify yourself if required for some reason? For example when interacting with an office or when you have to cast your ballot in an election?
      - jjgreen 5y ago
        For offices, typically a utilities bill (with your name and address on it) will suffice. Voting only requires a voting card which is sent to your address. Registration to vote is mandatory and requires your National Insurance number, but the penalty for not registering is small (a fine of £80 IIRC) and rarely enforced.
- inflagranti 5y ago
  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.
motohagiography 5y ago
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.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
  Same in the US. Both Biden (later confirmed by his press secretary) and Fauci previously stated they would not mandate vaccines.
  - skocznymroczny 5y ago
    The strategy was to vaccinate over half of the people, so that it'd be easier to pressure the remaining half later. People who already got vaccinated will ask what's the big deal... until their 'vaccine passport freedoms' get revoked because they only had two doses instead of three, four and however more are planned.
reillyse 5y ago
Irony is you have to show your papers (id showing proof of age) to get into nightclubs anyway.
- throwawayfear 5y ago
  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.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  When is the last time you needed to show your papers to enter a mall? Or a library? Or a museum? Or a public restroom? Or a McDonalds?
- reillyse 5y ago
  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."
tchalla 5y ago
> "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.
- kilroy123 5y ago
  Not to go into a restaurant to eat. Which is what is now being asked in many places.
  - davb 5y ago
    Unless you are a young person (or look like one) and decide to have alcohol with your meal. As much an optional act as going to a restaurant in the first place.
  - dgellow 5y ago
    Well, now we do. At least in Hamburg, Germany. It was very quick to adapt, you flash your QR code and that’s it, we are back to supporting our local restaurants and other businesses we love. The alternative was to see them close one by one, I’m personally very happy with the way the EU vaccine pass has been implemented.
    - ed25519FUUU 5y ago
      You understand that the restaurants were closing “one by one” because the government was closing them, and not because patrons were not attending them? It was a self-inflected wound.
      - howinteresting 5y ago
        What is your evidence for the implied counterfactual?
        5y ago
thepasswordis 5y ago
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/ 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.
- mapme 5y ago
  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. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2021/08/09/abbott-texas-hospitals-covid-503066 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2021/...
  - thepasswordis 5y ago
    Yeah this sure is a common talking point that comes up, but unfortunately for those who enjoy enforcing these things, it is not backed up by any data. Daily deaths (which is the best proxy we have for hospitalization) is nowhere near any of the peaks we have had in the last year and a half. If somehow deaths are down but hospital capacity is also down, that is the fault of the hospitals, not the vaccinated. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
mynameishere 5y ago
Reading threads like this, I get the sense that the very notion of civil liberties is completely foreign to vaccine fans.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  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...
  - was_a_dev 5y ago
    Gun rights aren't important. We don't have guns
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  In America we’ve known this since 9/11/01.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  I get the sense that people like police states that are pointed at other people, not themselves.
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    Moral authoritarians in general should be strongly opposed no matter what their values are, I struggle to think of a more retrograde force against human progress than the kind of curtain-twitching, aggressively conventional sort of person whose world view is “I’m absolutely right and you’re wrong, because I’m an authority figure and I said so”. People with an overemphasised disgust reaction are genuinely terrifying as a bloc because they’re fertile soil for the seeds of tyranny to grow in. Moral authoritarians who get powerful enough produce an ideological monoculture, something which does to ideas exactly what inbreeding does to genes. You can see this eventually in any overly authoritarian system, no strict moralistic ideology can survive contact with objective reality in all its shades of grey forever. Political and moral opinions can only ever be approximately correct, but moral authoritarians think they can just ignore all the complexity and produce simple answers with all the finesse and grace of a freight train that ignores the curves in its track as too complicated to bother with. Ideological pluralism and cognitive diversity are so important for a free society that can grow and develop, and moral authoritarians stand directly opposed to these things. Unfortunately the pandemic has brought many of them out of the woodwork and validated their appalling worldview.
bengale 5y ago
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.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  > 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? [0] https://covid19pulse.usc.edu/ https://covid19pulse.usc.edu/
  - bengale 5y ago
    I’m not sure if it’s something I want to get into but I don’t really agree. All I was saying is a policy supported by a large majority, proposed by this government, had to be walked back because of their inability to control the back benches. Boris is a piss poor leader.
woopwoop 5y ago
Vaccine passports are less offensive than regular passports.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  How come? So it's much more offensive for countries to control who enter them than what goes inside them?
  - ByteJockey 5y ago
    Some people don't like the idea of national borders (usually extreme libertarians and leftist-utopians).
  - woopwoop 5y ago
    Restricting people's freedom of movement based on their liability to spread dangerous diseases is much more reasonable than restricting their freedom of movement based on where they were born.
ed25519FUUU 5y ago
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!
- kuraudo 5y ago
  I believe everyone should be vaccinated but your point worries me. This doesn't seem 'right.' I don't believe in conspiracy theories of people pushing anti vaccination propaganda just to bring this state of affairs about as some are suggesting: that said, I don't want us to be in this place, but I also want everyone vaccinated so the vaccines can actually work and we can eradicate this thing. I can't help but feel manipulated in this state.
  - ed25519FUUU 5y ago
    Being pro vaccine and anti-government “emergency powers” is a perfectly reasonable position to take. The media and the government forces the false dichotomy on people. They say you’re either all-in surveillance state or you’re antivax. It’s part of their design.
    - BoxOfRain 5y ago
      This is exactly my position, I’m very pro-vaccine but I despise the surveillance state as the apparatus of tyranny.
throwawayfear 5y ago
Ditch the plans everywhere. No more mandates.
- eddof13 5y ago
  I concur, good on England

124 points by Kaibeezy 5y ago

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: https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-vaccine-passports-required-in-scotland-for-entry-to-large-venues-from-1-october-12403321 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 5y ago
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!
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  The country has one of the highest vaccination levels in the world also.
- MatteoFrigo 5y ago
  You have the right to be unhappy. However, looking at the latest data from the UK at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1016465/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_36.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/..., it is not clear whether pushing for more vaccines will change the situation in any way that makes you happy. For example, that report says that 97% of the blood donors has some kind of antibodies, either from vaccine or previous infection. This number is almost 100% for older people. Maybe blood donors are not representative of the population, but if they are, it's not obvious that the extra 3% buys you anything, even if you could capture it. For some age groups (Table 4), the vaccinated are more likely to be infected than the unvaccinated. I am sure there are good reasons for this, e.g. people more at risk may be more likely to be vaccinated, but whatever the reason is, the vaccine does not seem to be powerful enough to compensate for the extra risk.
  - quotemstr 5y ago
    > pushing for more vaccines will change the situation in any way that makes you happy. Given that even highly-vaccinated localities like Iceland (74% vaccinated) keep seeing waves of COVID cases and that COVID waves peak and decline without countries achieving the 90% rate vaccine proponents suggest as the threshold for herd immunity, we have to begin seriously questioning the public health case for mandatory universal vaccination. I wish more people would think critically about this issue instead of adopting an aggressive attitude of enforced conformity to an orthodoxy that doesn't appear to have all its facts lined up. Looking objectively at experiences of countries around the world, one is forced to conclude that in the case of COVID, with the non-sterilizing vaccines currently available, vaccine passports are neither sufficient nor necessary for safeguarding public health and present serious challenges to privacy, civil liberties, and the rule of law.
    - dia80 5y ago
      Vaccines cut severity of disease and thus the societal burden of infection. While I agree these measures are potentially draconian it's wrong to say they convey no benefit.
- Proven 5y ago
  You have the right to not go to nightclubs, or get your 3rd shot and double-mask before you do, if you like. What exactly are you mad at? That the government won't send its goons to weld your doors?
- paul_f 5y ago
  I think we are long past "short" anything related to COVID. It is now clearly endemic and will persist indefinitely. People need to make their own decisions on how to protect themselves and get on with their lives.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    So should we invest in vastly increasing hospital staffing and facilities because the current ICU loads are the new normal?
    - kryogen1c 5y ago
      why not? it seems absurd to think that at no point in the future will there be infectious endemic diseases. hospital infrastructure hardly seems like the wrong thing to overbuild.
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        We already spend a lot on healthcare as it is, more so here in the USA than in countries with universal healthcare. Should we go from spending 17.7% of our GDP to 30%? Just because some people aren’t interested getting a vaccine?
        pessimizer 5y ago
        The USA doesn't spend the amount it does on healthcare out of necessity, it does it because of graft. If we're willing to spend twice as much as everyone else for no reason, why not four times as much?
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        So? If healthcare needs rise, what is to assume that the graft won’t rise with it? The same people against vaccines are also against universal healthcare (at least in the states), so these problems will just keep being compounded.
- NoblePublius 5y ago
  How do you distinguish between the symptoms of “long covid” from the effects of being locked inside for a year? There have been over a billion covid infections globally (assume confirmed cases are 1/5 infections, which is a low estimate according to John’s Hopkins) so if “long covid” is so real, where are all these sufferers? If 1% have long covid, there should be at least ten million sufferers.
  - logicalmonster 5y ago
    Before Covid started, when a person had a particularly bad flu, it sometimes happened that they'd feel like crap and weak for a good long while after recovering: sometimes for weeks and months. I'm not completely certain about what "long-covid" is, but this phenomenon could be a combination of this known effect as well as the after effects of the inhuman living conditions society is forcing on people: unnatural social isolation, constant media induced fear and stress, lack of sunshine and exercise, bad diets (because there's fewer fun entertainment options), etc.
    - NoblePublius 5y ago
      The official symptoms list of Long Covid, according to Mayo Clinic, includes “depression” and “headache and muscle pain” and “confusion.” This is lockdown-driven depression. If the virus had lingering physical effects, there would be tens of millions of sufferers seeking treatment, and there arent.
- hcykb 5y ago
  So don't go out yourself, but don't tell others what they can do.
- shucksley 5y ago
  the CDC recognizes long covid, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/..., but not necessarily as a result of mild infections. it is also worth noting that the CDC, so far, does not recognize vaccine-induced long haul syndrome as a real syndrome. edit: re vaccinating the young, you need to pay special attn to the risks of myocarditis and pericarditis, which can potentially outweigh the benefits of the vaccine. vaccine advocates already made this mistake of ignoring vaccine risks with young women / GBS previously in the context of another vaccine and it would be a tragedy to needlessly maim the young with these new innovative vaccines. edit: dear creeps who are downvoting me without a reason, please take note of another HN submission at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...
- commandlinefan 5y ago
  > short, sharp dip Short? It’s been a year and a half with no end in sight.
- eynsham 5y ago
  I think of restrictions as falling into three buckets— - restrictions we could put up with ~forever, - restrictions we could put up with temporarily while waiting for something (e.g., vaccines), - restrictions we could put up with temporarily to mitigate some disaster by delay tactics (e.g. March lockdown.) Now the question is what further restrictions now would do. I think there are some things we should definitely encourage as not very intrusive (especially when it’s encouragement not law)—e.g., using FFP stuff rather than surgical/cloth masks in crowded spaces when possible, ventilation, &c. I don’t think that we’re really waiting for anything though. We are not throwing everything at getting better vaccines. Nor are we going to massively boost vaccine uptake. (Maybe we should wait for the 12-15 category I suppose, since then we’d be closer to herd immunity.) Finally, the NHS is not imminently going to be inundated. This might change in a few weeks. But delay right now isn’t necessary to avoid a March 2020/December 2020 apocalypse. So in my view restrictions now would merely delay the inevitable since nothing would actually change. This is in contrast to last year when we were waiting for the enormous breakthrough of vaccines, or in February/March as we vaccinated the vast majority of adults. I do think it would be a plausible strategy to dampen things for a month whilst vaccinating those aged 12-15 though—I suspect vaccination would do nearly all the work there though. (On a tangent, I don’t see why we don’t just administer the first dose to them anyway—even if the second is too risky the first is much safer.)
thinkingemote 5y ago
The purchase (and maybe rollout?) of the vaccines was done at the nation level rather than individual country.
- lampington 5y ago
  Purchase was national, rollout per-country (though they did all do it pretty much the same way, with broadly similar results)

NomeChomsky 5y ago

Good. There is no evidence to support them. You can still transmit the virus whilst double vaccinated. They do not slow spread only hospitalisation.

sofixa 5y ago
There is, the number of vaccinations in France jumped remarkably after vaccine passports were made mandatory for cinemas, theatres, restaurants, etc. Considering that's the main goal of such policies, it seems like a success. And yes, the main point is to limit hospitalisations, because they're the main limiting factor ( at least in France, but probably in most other developed countries as well).
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  The same brand of ‘successes’ can be achieved by banning alcohol, tobacco, fast food or whatever vice you want.
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I’m not sure if I would consider the vice of drinking alcohol quite the same as the vice of infecting and potentially killing other people.
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      I think alcohol might be even more dangerous to others than being unvaccinated. Violent drug users are well known ending up in fights and even causing death or permanent damage when they attack randomly at others during night. Or even kill them sometimes. So I think we should apply the new standard to it and ban it totally.
      - nobodyandproud 5y ago
        And we have laws to hold people accountable when under the influence, they do something bad and affect someone else. That’s a fantastic idea: Start holding the unvaccinated criminally responsible, if they’re the likely point of infection for someone else. Thanks for the idea.

tinus_hn 5y ago

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.

elcomet 5y ago
It makes sense if vaccine reduces infection rate.
Ekaros 5y ago
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.
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  Well, of course it’s mostly about sacrifices other people have to make. You know, ‘I don’t go to festivals so I don’t mind if they’re banned’. But ‘it’s inconvenient if my children are quarantined from school so that should be lenient’.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    The benefits of society from in person education are so much higher than the benefit of music festivals that your comparison is absolutely ridiculous. A better comparison would be churches and bars.
- WorkLobster 5y ago
  This is a ridiculous straw-man take and you know it. Please aim for helpful discussion instead of empty sarcasm.
  - 5y ago

libertine 5y ago

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.

ddxxdd 5y ago
Last time I checked, the top 3 countries in terms of vaccination rates are also the top 3 countries in terms of number of active covid cases. Israel is #1 in vaccination rates and #1 in daily cases.
- martin8412 5y ago
  That must have been a while ago, because Israel is nowhere near top in vaccination rate anymore. They had a fast rollout, but are now stuck at around 61%.. Meanwhile, western Europe is around 80-90% vaccinated
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=FRA https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=FRA shows more like 60%-70% for the total population (I turned on more countries than France). Are your numbers percent of adults or including people that have recovered from infection or something?
    - jvzr 5y ago
      Government numbers in France show 80.2% today ("The figure gives the share of the population over the age of 12 that are fully vaccinated (all required doses") We crossed 60% on July 29, and 70% on August 20
      - 5y ago

gorgoiler 5y ago

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. Wasn't this the passport scheme?

FridayoLeary 5y ago
tbh the document and qr code are trivial to generate and forge from what i remember. I'm not condoning it i'm just pointing out its weakness.
- tonfa 5y ago
  They're not based on public key crypto like in the rest of the world?
  - isoskeles 5y ago
    They are. They’re trivial to create with your own issuer but not to forge an existing issuer, unless their private key is leaked.
    - fy20 5y ago
      And what's the point of that? Aren't the verification apps going to check the issuer?
      - isoskeles 5y ago
        Verification apps should check the issuer. But you can issue and sign your own vaccine codes trivially. Some apps will go a step further to check that the issuer is “trusted.” For example, there is a good list of issuers considered trusted here: https://github.com/the-commons-project/vci-directory/blob/main/vci-issuers.json https://github.com/the-commons-project/vci-directory/blob/ma... The most popular reader app I know of will mark issuers that are not on this list as “Partially-verified.” I’m not going to get too deep into this because it’s clear that HN is, for some reason, very antagonistic toward any discussion on the matter unless some correct permutation of words is used. Nonetheless, I’ve researched this quite a bit. Anyone can make and issue their own SMART Health Card.

jjgreen 5y ago

No point now, who would go to a nightclub now that we know there is a risk that you find yourself dancing with Michael Gove https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toYL4jjl4q4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toYL4jjl4q4

refurb 5y ago

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).

_Microft 5y ago
> 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).
- jjgreen 5y ago
  Wouldn't work in the UK since we don't have ID cards.
  - _Microft 5y ago
    How do you identify yourself if required for some reason? For example when interacting with an office or when you have to cast your ballot in an election?
    - jjgreen 5y ago
      For offices, typically a utilities bill (with your name and address on it) will suffice. Voting only requires a voting card which is sent to your address. Registration to vote is mandatory and requires your National Insurance number, but the penalty for not registering is small (a fine of £80 IIRC) and rarely enforced.
inflagranti 5y ago
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.

motohagiography 5y ago

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.

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
Same in the US. Both Biden (later confirmed by his press secretary) and Fauci previously stated they would not mandate vaccines.
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
  The strategy was to vaccinate over half of the people, so that it'd be easier to pressure the remaining half later. People who already got vaccinated will ask what's the big deal... until their 'vaccine passport freedoms' get revoked because they only had two doses instead of three, four and however more are planned.

reillyse 5y ago

Irony is you have to show your papers (id showing proof of age) to get into nightclubs anyway.

throwawayfear 5y ago
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.
spookthesunset 5y ago
When is the last time you needed to show your papers to enter a mall? Or a library? Or a museum? Or a public restroom? Or a McDonalds?
reillyse 5y ago
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."

tchalla 5y ago

> "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.

kilroy123 5y ago
Not to go into a restaurant to eat. Which is what is now being asked in many places.
- davb 5y ago
  Unless you are a young person (or look like one) and decide to have alcohol with your meal. As much an optional act as going to a restaurant in the first place.
- dgellow 5y ago
  Well, now we do. At least in Hamburg, Germany. It was very quick to adapt, you flash your QR code and that’s it, we are back to supporting our local restaurants and other businesses we love. The alternative was to see them close one by one, I’m personally very happy with the way the EU vaccine pass has been implemented.
  - ed25519FUUU 5y ago
    You understand that the restaurants were closing “one by one” because the government was closing them, and not because patrons were not attending them? It was a self-inflected wound.
    - howinteresting 5y ago
      What is your evidence for the implied counterfactual?
      - 5y ago

thepasswordis 5y ago

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/ 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.

mapme 5y ago
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. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2021/08/09/abbott-texas-hospitals-covid-503066 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.politico.com/amp/news/2021/...
- thepasswordis 5y ago
  Yeah this sure is a common talking point that comes up, but unfortunately for those who enjoy enforcing these things, it is not backed up by any data. Daily deaths (which is the best proxy we have for hospitalization) is nowhere near any of the peaks we have had in the last year and a half. If somehow deaths are down but hospital capacity is also down, that is the fault of the hospitals, not the vaccinated. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

mynameishere 5y ago

Reading threads like this, I get the sense that the very notion of civil liberties is completely foreign to vaccine fans.

Ekaros 5y ago
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...
- was_a_dev 5y ago
  Gun rights aren't important. We don't have guns
commandlinefan 5y ago
In America we’ve known this since 9/11/01.
pessimizer 5y ago
I get the sense that people like police states that are pointed at other people, not themselves.
- BoxOfRain 5y ago
  Moral authoritarians in general should be strongly opposed no matter what their values are, I struggle to think of a more retrograde force against human progress than the kind of curtain-twitching, aggressively conventional sort of person whose world view is “I’m absolutely right and you’re wrong, because I’m an authority figure and I said so”. People with an overemphasised disgust reaction are genuinely terrifying as a bloc because they’re fertile soil for the seeds of tyranny to grow in. Moral authoritarians who get powerful enough produce an ideological monoculture, something which does to ideas exactly what inbreeding does to genes. You can see this eventually in any overly authoritarian system, no strict moralistic ideology can survive contact with objective reality in all its shades of grey forever. Political and moral opinions can only ever be approximately correct, but moral authoritarians think they can just ignore all the complexity and produce simple answers with all the finesse and grace of a freight train that ignores the curves in its track as too complicated to bother with. Ideological pluralism and cognitive diversity are so important for a free society that can grow and develop, and moral authoritarians stand directly opposed to these things. Unfortunately the pandemic has brought many of them out of the woodwork and validated their appalling worldview.

bengale 5y ago

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.

spookthesunset 5y ago
> 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? [0] https://covid19pulse.usc.edu/ https://covid19pulse.usc.edu/
- bengale 5y ago
  I’m not sure if it’s something I want to get into but I don’t really agree. All I was saying is a policy supported by a large majority, proposed by this government, had to be walked back because of their inability to control the back benches. Boris is a piss poor leader.

woopwoop 5y ago

Vaccine passports are less offensive than regular passports.

Ekaros 5y ago
How come? So it's much more offensive for countries to control who enter them than what goes inside them?
- ByteJockey 5y ago
  Some people don't like the idea of national borders (usually extreme libertarians and leftist-utopians).
- woopwoop 5y ago
  Restricting people's freedom of movement based on their liability to spread dangerous diseases is much more reasonable than restricting their freedom of movement based on where they were born.

ed25519FUUU 5y ago

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!

kuraudo 5y ago
I believe everyone should be vaccinated but your point worries me. This doesn't seem 'right.' I don't believe in conspiracy theories of people pushing anti vaccination propaganda just to bring this state of affairs about as some are suggesting: that said, I don't want us to be in this place, but I also want everyone vaccinated so the vaccines can actually work and we can eradicate this thing. I can't help but feel manipulated in this state.
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  Being pro vaccine and anti-government “emergency powers” is a perfectly reasonable position to take. The media and the government forces the false dichotomy on people. They say you’re either all-in surveillance state or you’re antivax. It’s part of their design.
  - BoxOfRain 5y ago
    This is exactly my position, I’m very pro-vaccine but I despise the surveillance state as the apparatus of tyranny.

throwawayfear 5y ago

Ditch the plans everywhere. No more mandates.

eddof13 5y ago
I concur, good on England