The discussion around “vaccine passports” would be immensely improved if we could separate two questions: (1) Is it desirable to have a secure mechanism for authenticating vaccine status for at least some use cases, and (2) when & where is such authentication appropriate?
The answer to (1) is pretty easy: “Yes, obviously.” We already have a mechanism of sorts—those little cards everyone posts on their Instagram post-jab—it’s just not particularly secure. Anyone with a printer can make one.
Clearly (2) is a lot thornier and more contentious. I think for the most part we should give private entities latitude to determine the circumstances where verification is necessary—it’s cumbersome enough that I doubt many will do it frivolously. But it’s a separate question.
That is to say, there’s a lot of room for reasonable debate around when it’s appropriate to expect people to verify vaccine status. But if we acknowledge it’s highly desirable for some use cases, that’s not an argument against the existence of a verification mechanism.
By analogy: There’s plenty of room for debate around whether various adult activities should be restricted to people over 18 or 21, but as long as it’s at least sometimes appropriate to make those distinctions...
…then there’s a good case for a convenient and widely available mechanism for verifying one’s age, largely distinct from the question of which activities are appropriately restricted to which age groups.
It’s worth emphasizing that our present default is essentially: “Treat everyone as a carrier,” which itself entails a whole lot of inconvenience and limitation of liberty. The alternative to verification in practice is “keep treating everyone as a carrier everywhere."
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