Thread by @cricketwyvern

Vaccine passports are unethical, unlikely to lead to any significant benefits & will cause huge costs. But they have another significant problem:
Under the Govt’s Plan B, the conditions for bringing them in will only happen if (ironically) vaccines are not working well.
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The Govt says vaccine passports are being kept in reserve for a situation in which the NHS comes under *unsustainable pressure*.

So what are the circumstances in which that might happen? …

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In July England opened up at the peak of a pretty big outbreak: positive tests reached 80% of the highest ever point last winter &, for some age groups & areas, much higher than the winter peak...

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Since then we’ve had full nightclubs, sports stadia, festivals, gigs, open schools & now universities. No mandatory masks, social distancing, bubbles or vaccine passports …

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Despite that, positive tests are currently lower than when we opened in July & look like they are now starting to drop again.

More importantly deaths reached a peak of 119 per day in early Sept, just over 10% of Jan peak whilst …

… total Covid hospital patients in England reached a peak average of 6.4k in mid-Sept, less than 20% of the Jan peak (34.3).

This is consistent with vaccinating the vulnerable having a significant impact on hospitalisations & deaths …

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Assuming some seasonality in the virus, we can expect cases to rise again at some point in the winter.

But for the impact on hospitalisations to be *unsustainable*, i.e. even higher than peak last Jan, cases need to rise to several times the summer peak …

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Vaccination take-up is already over 80%+ for adults.
Further, a large % of unvaccinated have previously had Covid and hence have a high level of immunity …

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The only plausible way we could see an increase in cases big enough to mean more hospital patients than last winter is if either:
a. vaccine effectiveness against infection wanes to a very significant extent
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b. there is a new variant that is resistant to the vaccines …

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In either case, vaccine passports would not only be useless but potentially counterproductive:
They would allow people who no longer have good immunity from the vaccine into events whilst the unvaccinated, most of whom have immunity from previous infection, would be banned …

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So the only situation in which the Govt could make a case for vaccine passports is, ironically, one in which the vaccines no longer work well and the vaccine passport would probably make things worse.

Has the Govt really thought through its Plan B?