I'm 100% convinced Polio and smallpox are making a comeback soon. Americans have to be the dumbest bunch in modern history. All the technology in the world can't save us from ourselves.
Except that requiring you reveal an immune deficiency or some other condition may be a violation of HIPAA laws as that isn't a voluntary condition. It is also a situation that could be used against someone regarding where liability might be an issue.
This is really out of my field so I'm not going claim any expertise on this. My understanding of those is that there are conditions under HIPAA can be disclosed and when done so that information can't be shared or discussed widely beyond what's necessary. The problem with something like a vaccine passport is that would be expanding it from narrow situations to much broader situations and as a passport the level of privacy to it would be much less restricted. To the extent of how they handle these will have to be worked out and why I don't think they are going to be simple or as clear cut.
Seems that the pandemic might also play a part in this... in normal times they might view health issues differently. But I am not a lawyer, nr someone that knows HIPAA regulations.
"Vaccine Passports Prolong Lockdowns": https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaccine-passports-prolong-lockdowns-11617726629?mod=hp_opin_pos_2 Vaccine Passports Prolong Lockdowns What looks like an easing of restrictions is actually a coercive scheme. By Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya April 6, 2021 12:30 pm ET As tens of millions are inoculated against Covid-19, officials in places as diverse as New York state, Israel and China have introduced “vaccine passports,” and there’s talk of making them universal. The idea is simple: Once you’ve received your shots, you get a document or phone app, which you flash to gain entry to previously locked-down venues—restaurants, theaters, sports arenas, offices, schools. It sounds like a way of easing coercive lockdown restrictions, but it’s the opposite. To see why, consider dining. Restaurants in most parts of the U.S. have already reopened, at limited capacity in some places. A vaccine passport would prohibit entry by potential customers who haven’t received their shots. It would restrict the freedom even of those who have: If you’re vaccinated but your spouse isn’t, forget about dining out as a couple. Planes and trains, which have continued to operate throughout the pandemic, would suddenly be off-limits to the unvaccinated. The only places where restrictions would be relatively eased would be those still fully locked down, such as many live-event venues and schools. Yet even there, the passport idea depends on keeping the underlying restrictions in place—giving officials an incentive to do so for much longer as leverage to overcome vaccine resistance. The vaccine passport should therefore be understood not as an easing of restrictions but as a coercive scheme to encourage vaccination. Such measures can be legitimate: Many schools require immunization against common childhood illnesses, and visitors to some African countries must be vaccinated against yellow fever. But Covid vaccine passports would harm, not benefit, public health. The idea that everybody needs to be vaccinated is as scientifically baseless as the idea that nobody does. Covid vaccines are essential for older, high-risk people and their caretakers and advisable for many others. But those who’ve been infected are already immune. The young are at low risk, and children—for whom no vaccine has been approved anyway—are at far less risk of death than from the flu. If authorities mandate vaccination of those who don’t need it, the public will start questioning vaccines in general. Effective public health relies on trust. The public has lost trust in officials in part because they’ve performed poorly—relying on lockdowns to disastrous effect—and in part because they’ve made clear their distrust of the public. Trust, after all, is a two-way street. Coercive vaccination policies would erode trust even further. Even well-informed people may legitimately wonder: Why are they forcing me to take this shot if it’s so good for me? Vaccine passports are unjust and discriminatory. Most of those endorsing the idea belong to the laptop class—privileged professionals who worked safely and comfortably at home during the epidemic. Millions of Americans did essential jobs at their usual workplaces and became immune the hard way. Now they would be forced to risk adverse reactions from a vaccine they don’t need. Passports would entice young, low-risk professionals, in the West and the developing world, to get the vaccine before older, higher-risk but less affluent members of society. Many unnecessary deaths would result. The widespread use of vaccines against polio, measles, mumps, rubella, rabies and other pathogens has saved millions of lives. Vaccines are one of the most important inventions in human history—the reason that before last year many in the West had forgotten that infectious disease could pose a populationwide threat. Those pushing for coercive Covid vaccination threaten all this progress by undermining public trust in vaccines. In this sense, they are more dangerous than the small group of so-called anti-vaxxers have ever been. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have ruled out vaccine passports for their states. Other politicians should follow his example. Mr. Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist, is a professor at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bhattacharya, a physician and economist, is a professor at Stanford Medical School.
I think I'm opposed, at least beyond where we ordinarily share vaccine information. Right now there is a legitimate public interest in who is sick and who is susceptible. I'm okay with testing requirements. But, once most of the population is vaccinated (or chose not to be) I don't see a legitimate public interest in other people's vaccination status. Sure, there will be some people who can't get vaccinated that are exposed to risk by dumb-ass anti-vaxxers, but that's already the case with many other diseases and we didn't believe that justified getting people's medical data. There are some places where I think requiring proof of vaccination is appropriate (international flights for example), but I don't want to see it at every grocery store and playground.
Link to grocery store requiring a vaccination passport? or just an everyday passport? or even a state issued id?
Next thing you know they'll have these electronic gadgets everyone carries around with them that has gps recievers in them.
Looking forward to my cell reception improving once I get the Gates 5G cerebral microchip. You're a ****ing lunatic.
He's one of those posters where I pray that he's trolling because the other option is severe mental health issues.
I don't think HIPAA is a concern for the fact that it's a federal law. Any system must comply, if it's even applicable here. NY "vaccine passport" allows for negative test or proof of vaccination. That's probably what get around the 'it could be discriminatory'. I personally don't see anything discriminatory about it as long as both testing and vaccination continue to be free and widely available.
The issue with discrimination is why the ADA covers discrimination on medical conditions. Revealing things like compromised immune system as a reason for not being vaccinated while could be an easy exception to a vaccine passport it does end up being revealing a medical condition that could be basis for discrimination. This could lead to other actions requiring things like the ADA and other laws. All of this possible but makes the use of the vaccine passport that much more cumbersome and harder to implement.
If vaccine passport prolongs lockdown, then we shouldn't have it. But of course, the only reason that vaccine passport is even being talk about is to open up businesses that are still closed. This opinion piece assumes that businesses that already open would require vaccine passport - I doubt grocery stores, restaurants, and those type of businesses that are already open would start requiring this.
Every state today allows for medical exemptions. Any "vaccine passport" cannot be done withOUT medical exemptions due to existing state laws. I would think if exemptions aren't allowed for covid vaccine, new laws would have to be crafted to said so - that's not happening. The businesses that scan "vaccine passport" doesn't need to know anything about medical exemption or even if the result of YES or NO is due to vaccination or testing. Remember that we aren't starting from nothing. The reasons why we have all these "protection" against discrimination in place today is we have decades of experience in medical records and in vaccination requirements codified in laws.
all good points, but the nervousness is about the context . . . I don't remember ever having to show my medical records to fly from New York to Denver in a lot of ways, I think this is a solution in search of a problem, and by the time these things get up and running for real, the need for them will have largely passed. so it's an unfortunate distraction right now from bigger problems
