Thread by @AdamWagner1

If you are interested in the ethical and legal issues around ‘vaccine passports’ see this thread 👇 ...

https://twitter.com/adamwagner1/status/1367527617377746945

... and this podcast podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bet…

You may notice my view is basically: I can see the serious risks to liberties, I can see some possible benefits, as a policy it’s more justifiable in care homes than pubs. If it makes lockdowns less likely then I don’t think it can be fully discounted by libertarian arguments.

I get the Liberty/Big Brother Watch argument that it’s a slippery slope to state surveillance. But I have reflected for a while on the privacy based arguments against a centralised contact tracing app and wonder if we missed a trick there in preventing outbreaks with...

... a relatively minimally intrusive tech based option. Was quite taken by a @lawfareblog podcast on that podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the… -

I am also concerned that people who are simply anti-vaccine (rather than bothered by the discrimination risk against people who can’t take the vaccine) and anti all measures to combat the virus may be driving some of the energy of the online opposition to vaccine passports.

I think there may be a version of this policy where the data is held privately in a way the venues could not access, and is not just vaccination but also testing and antibodies-based, which could make socialising safer. But it could also radicalise opposition to the vaccine...

... which would be a huge backfire. Sorry to be a bit of a fence sitter on this but there it is.

Ultimately human rights (as I have been saying since the beginning) are not meant to be absolute bar on policies which can help protect public health. There may be a proportionate version of this policy which protects from further outbreaks and helps normal social life return

I also think you can see this from a different point of view, human rights wise. If the logic of lockdown is we are all assumed to be infectious and therefore must collectively be prohibited social lives, it becomes essential to be able to prove we are not infectious.

Of course, if you do not accept the logic of lockdowns then you will never accept the logic of vaccine passports. Some will say “my freedom is not something to be given to me, it is something only I can give away”.

But the government does accept the logic of lockdowns (as do most governments across the world). You can start at a different starting point if you want, but it’s highly unlikely to change the policy preference. So we may be stuck with VPs as the means to mitigate that

I’m kind of with Lord Sumption on this!

You can also find the @BHumanPodcast on vaccine passports on YouTube - if you like watching things