A recent poll in The Economist has some remarkable findings. Apparently, 40% of people want to keep masks forever, and 35% think there should be a permanent 10 day quarantine on returning from abroad - both regardless of COVID. 25% want to shut all nightclubs and casinos, and a similar fraction also think there should be a permanent 10pm curfew, again regardless of COVID.
What exactly does this tell us ? Bugger all, probably, for two reasons. One is the sampling bias where only very strange people respond to surveys. The second is to generalise from one of the main lessons of bullshit : that if something seems too good to be true it probably is; or in this case, if something seems too extreme to be true then it's at least a good idea to be deeply suspicious of it.
I don't believe the Economist poll for a moment. The actual fraction of people who support a permanent 10pm curfew is probably closer to 0.2%, not 20%. Certainly there are lots of weird idiots out there, but when did you ever hear people calling out for more curfews ? You never did. Never. Not at all. It isn't a thing and it never will be. There just aren't that many idiots who are that sort of weird out there.
For this reason I find objections to COVID passports a bunch of bollocks. I mainly mean the sort intended for domestic use, where you'd have to prove vaccination/testing/previous infection status before access was granted to normal services like restaurants and the like. People raise bizarre objections about "a two-tier society" and that "it's nothing to do with health". This is plainly ludicrous. When did you ever hear anyone saying that they yearn for a world in which things are harder to buy and shops are more difficult to gain entry to ? You never did, because it doesn't make a lick of sense.
To my mind re-opening based on immunological status is completely sensible. It wouldn't get you true herd immunity but it would go an awful long way towards an effective herd immunity. The people doing by far the most interactions in society, and so having the most exposure to the virus, would be the ones with the highest degree of protection, i.e. previously infected or immunised. Hence, society and the economy would re-open as much as possible for the greatest possible number while still reducing the infection rate to its lowest possible number. That's what "learning to live the virus" ought to mean, not the government's bollocks interpretation where it means "accepting thousands more people will needlessly die".
This needn't be a binary proposition like the UK government seems to favour with its idiotic "freedom day" nonsense. The extremes need not be absolutes. That this, those with the greatest restrictions wouldn't have to become virtual prisoners (except for the most vulnerable), nor would those with the greatest protection/lowest risk be allowed to run naked in the streets and vomit on people. Everyone needs access to essentials like food and pharmacies; conversely, there's no good reason to do away with masks or mass testing just yet, nor do we have to rush to re-open nightclubs. But a passport system would seem to be an obvious and potentially very powerful weapon in the arsenal of allowing the maximum degree of normality at the smallest level of restrictions enforced on the smallest possible number.
In what way this is supposed to lead to a "two tier" system I really struggle to understand. It's in no-one's interests to keep the shops closed for a minute longer than necessary. If we hark to the usual advice of "follow the money" and ask "who benefits ?", the answers would seem to be that exactly no-one benefits financially from keeping everyone out of the shops. Nobody at all has any direct financial benefit from closing the shops, except indirectly in preventing their customers from dying. Take away the health risk and it's in everyone's interests to re-open as much and as quickly as possible.
Furthermore, the vaccine is freely and readily available - there is no good reason why anyone can't or shouldn't get one, except on grounds of medical exemption. Since vaccines are pretty much universally being delivered according to age, there is no reason to think that a passport would exacerbate inequality - providing, of course, that sensible financial protections are bestowed on those unable (not unwilling) to be vaccinated.
Now to be fair we've seen various governments do all kinds of crazy shenanigans in response to the pandemic, not least of which is forbidding large shops from selling "non essential goods". That was bollocks, and I signed petitions against it. But in no way whatever does that hint at a move towards some despotic managed economy. There's a meme going round saying that our economy collapses when we stop buying stuff we don't need, but surely the main economic hit has been on the hospitality and travel sectors, not retail - which goes against other popular memes about how we just don't talk to each other enough these days. You can't have it both ways.
(Yes, free-market consumerism is a real problem, but it seems to me that this has little or nothing to do with the pandemic. It's a separate issue, and trying to tie the the two together only induces unnecessary confusion.)
To be fair, there are hints (though only hints thus far) that the government is moving back towards a passport system again, but only after it was needlessly dismissed before. And again, the government continues its track record of barely fettered incompetence. In particular it rightly decides to reduce the requirement for self-isolation for the fully vaccinated who've been in contact with someone infected, but only after another full month. There's no reason they couldn't bring this in tomorrow via the NHS app. I accept the travel sector does need time to prepare even for positive changes, but removing the self-isolation requirement requires at most a week's notice to inform everyone of the planned change.
For my part, I'm back in the office twice a week most weeks, but I'd be fine with less. What I'm less fine with is not having been home in eighteen months. While I think it's stupid to blindly end all restrictions, I think it would be equally stupid to blindly keep all restrictions now that the vaccine program is fully underway. A passport system would be an extra incentive towards vaccination, not some weird lurch into an Orwellian nightmare.
I for one would sooner die, of covid or anything else, than go about my life presenting an electronic "proof of right to enter" to the state and to corporations. I could see a clear argument for a national vaccine reward scheme "once >90% of people have the vaccine we will scrap the coronavirus act 2020 and never even consider using such dangerous powers again" as a way to incentivise vaccination, or for litle bribes to the hesitant "£50 of shopping vouchers for getting jabbed", but a domestic passport is too dangerous. Look at how Xi Jinping and his communist mates are rolling out a social credit system to control all aspects of daily life, don't imagine that wouldn't happen in the west as soon as a vaccine passport scheme was implemented. This is a serious danger to basic liberty, all rights of association, rights to engage in commerce and rights to speech would be under the control of a state run app. Precisely how long before inconvenient political opponents all get marked as "unvaccinated" even if they've had the vaccine? When the state is able to take away people's rights and cast them out from society with nothing but a tweak on a database there is nothing to stop them doing it to anyone, for any reason. The current UK government is planning 10 year jail sentences for noisy single-person protests, 14 year jail sentences for journalists who embarass them, unprecedented mandatory vaccinations for some occupations with less than 90 minutes of debate and no publication of a cost-benefit analysis... do you think Johnson can be trustd with the powers vaccine passports give him? With such an ID card scheme what do you think that Johnson;s racist administration would be doing to asylum seekers and other immigrants? Johnson would use vaccine passports to cut-off and hunt-down the most socially and economically precarious people in society. Vaccine passports swap the state of law from "innocent until proven guilty" to "outcast until the state chooses to recognise you". I'm backing Big Brother Watch's campaign, and I've joined a local anti-passport protest group (even though regrettably many of them are anti-vaxxers, I'm pro-vaccine), I'm standing up for everyone's liberties until everyone else realises just how much they are worth. That whole argument ofcourse has left aside the single most scientific point: vaccine passports are useless. Vaccines are an indidivual protective measures which massively reduces the chance of any vaccinated indidivudal getting serious (hospital worthy) covid symptoms by 95% or more, that makes covid, to the vaccinated, significantly less worrying than influenza (for which vaccines are unfortunately less effective). A vaccinated person has no cause to fear being around the unvaccinated. Furthermore vaccines do not prevent covid transmission, and although they reduce it the reduction is only slight. A vaccinated person needn't fear catching covid, and they are almost as likely to be able to catch it from someone vaccinated as from sone unvaccinated. Vaccine passports cannot therefore stop the spread, and are not needed to protect the vulnerable.
ReplyDelete"I for one would sooner die, of covid or anything else, than go about my life presenting an electronic "proof of right to enter" to the state and to corporations."
DeleteYou wouldn't though. You have to have a passport to enter foreign states anyway, and you have to buy train tickets to get on a train, or pay entry fees to all kinds of venues, or show ID in various government buildings. Furthermore you have to provide proof of a negative test in certain areas anyway. I don't think you can possibly be suggesting that you're opposed to proving that you don't have a contagious disease when enterting a crowded venue.
I don't buy the slippery slope argument at all. There is no interest in Johnson's libertarian nutcase cronies from making good ands services more difficult to access for anyone. It's an immediate, massive economic hit that even they're not blind enough to ignore.
It DOES make sense to be opposed to certain forms of passports but none at all to be opposed to them on general principle. The current plan for nightclubs to ONLY allow vaccine passport holders and not those testing negatives is a stupid one. The point of a covid passport is that it would be based on immunological status : past infection, recent negative test, or vaccination status. Proof of negative test can be provided on paper form with an electronic app only for convenience.
Your argument against vaccination passports is flawed for many reasons. First, if only the most protected are allowed to gather and mix, then this leads to effective herd immunity since the vulnerable will be much less likely to contract the virus. Hence cases will plummet. Allow everyone to mix and the virus will still spread among the vulnerable, since the current population does not have enough herd immunity to quell transmission.
I believe your 95% immunity figure is not correct with regard to the delta variant, IIRC, it's more like 60% after the second dose. A vaccinated person should still wear masks and social distance wherever possible, and the rising cases and hospitalisation figures shows that it is MUCH more dangerous than influenza. Immunological passports are therefore a powerful tool against prevening the spread of infection, but they are not the only necessity. They are therefore a simple, effective, common-sense way to resume as much normal freedoms as possible while protecting the vulnerable.
Dear BW, I see you put a lot of thought into your argument. However, I was confused as you say you'd sooner die then having to show proof of right to enter. This to me seems very odd as there are a lot of things that already require you to show proof of right to enter. Anytime you buy a ticket for something for instance. And this might be different in your country, but a lot of countries require proof of ID for things like employment, banking, driving, entering into a contract of any kind, using certain government services and even going to jail etc. This makes these forms of ID a proof of right to enter as you are not allowed in unless you proof that you have a right to do so.
DeleteIf we just take it from the view point of public safety then driver licenses serve as the proof of right to enter and you are required to show this prove when asked. Now of course you are not asked to do so each time you get in the car, as that would be a logistical nightmare, but in most countries you are required to have it with you whenever operating a vehicle.
Opening up society for those who have recently recovered from a Covid infection, been vaccinated, or have a recent negative test is a sensible way to ensure that those who are medically not able to get vaccinated or otherwise vulnerable stay safe.
I'm sure trusting Boris with any amount of power is a scary thing, but that is why he's not an all powerful ruler. You have recourses available to you to stop a sensible measure from turning into a black mirror episode, something the good people of China don't really have (at least not in the way the UK has).
Even a slight reduction in transmission will be significant if enough people are vaccinated. However, I would like to point out that depending on the vaccine the reduction in your chance to catch the virus and thus transmitting it is not as slight as you suggest. You are about 90% less likely to catch it and if you are not infected then you won't pass it on either. Your suggestion about vaccinated people spreading the virus only holds up for that small subset who still get Covid. And they get Covid mainly through unvaccinated or partly vaccinated individuals as they are more likely to be infected. You are however right to say that as that small subset of vaccinated individuals are not likely to develop symptoms or only get mild symptoms they are more likely to keep spreading it and so regular tests still have a role to play. But if the vaccination rate is high enough then this problem becomes less and less significant as people become less likely to encounter such a person.
Anyhoo, long story short, if you'd rather die then showing proof of right to enter, how have you been alive so far?
Additionally :
Delete"With such an ID card scheme what do you think that Johnson;s racist administration would be doing to asylum seekers and other immigrants?"
Well, nothing, since foreign nationals living in the UK have to have proof of residency of some form anyway, and are therefore traceable. Being able to prove their immunological status makes no difference at all. I've got Czech residency (and a residency card to prove it) and I don't feel like the Czech government is tracking my every movement. There would be no gain to them in doing so and an awful lot of difficulty. It wouldn't make any sense. Most other European countries have requirements to carry ID cards and are hardly dystopian hell-holes. Actually they're mostly very pleasant places. Not saying that I WANT the UK to have a similar system (I don't think it's necessary), just that a covid passport is even less intrusive than this.
"Vaccine passports swap the state of law from "innocent until proven guilty" to "outcast until the state chooses to recognise you"."
The state already rightly denies you access to driving licenses, jobs, bank accounts, and basically anything necessary to function in society unless you have ID. Why should it not presume everyone is vulnerable to infection unless they can prove otherwise ? You can't have liberty if you're dead.
part1/2
ReplyDeleteI think you've been lulled in to a false sense of security over just what a slippery slope this is. The whole point of an electronic ID is that, unlike a driving license, it is not just a permanent document to be occasionally queried but an electronic record able to be modified on the spur of the moment from a government database. They want phone apps for it because A) this seems easy and people won't realsie the trap they've fallen it to when all they are asked to do is get out a phone (at first) and crucially B) because an ID system based on QR codes can be check against a government server every time it is used. This form of checking (place being entered scans QR code, connects over interent to government server, server side a comparison is done between QR code and a list of ID codes) leaves a log of EVERY movement of the person and messn that the government can make someone an outcast just by flipping a bit on a server. And don't think they won't turn this system against vaccinated people, discriminating against the unvaccinated is only the start, then it moves to discriminating against the vaccinated too, based on some other criteria, and so forth until everyone is an outcast except the state's crony elite. Note that many countries implementing vaccine passes are requiring them for people to vote, so the unvaccinated are disenfranchised as well as discriminated against. They are also requiring them for all large meetings of people, that means people would have to show government issued ID, and get realtime permsisions (see how the QR code works) as well as tracking, when visiting say, a protest meeting or an opposition party conference. Some people have seen this risk, even some MPs who wrote a damning report warning of the perils of vaccine passes and just how they would be abused by Johnsons*'s government, see https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5802/cmselect/cmpubadm/42/4203.htm . We must note also that totalitarian measures used for public health purposes usually serve to turn people against the measures, and increase noncompliance. Vaccine hesitant people are less likely to take the vaccines if they feel coerced, historically we see that smallpox vaccination was widely resisted, even rioted against, when mandatory in the UK, when the mandates were dropepd and it became voluntary almost everyone was willing to take it. There is a reason that since the 19th century, when those mandates were dropped, we've ensured propoer consent for public health treatements, without consent people feel it is being done TO them not FOR them and they are inclined to resist and circumvent. Loads of people, even the vulnerable, are stating they'll refuse booster shots if vaccine passport programmes go ahead, do we really want to imperil our so-far very sccessful vaccine rollout for the sake of an ID scheme? And while the vaccine(s) may be <60% effective in preventing infection they all definitely do manage >95% for preventing severe disease, surely this latter one is the measure which matters. Immunity certification and bouncers on every door demanding immunity ID cards are something businesses, many deep in debt after the past 16 months, cannot afford. Vaccine certification would drive many small businesses out and turn the market over to only the large monopolistic corporations which could afford to have such extra complications added to their workflow. I'll also mention how much fraud the scheme would cause, not just fraudulent passes and how these would put money in the coffers of gangs who'd conduct much more concerning illegal activies with their gains, but also how people being expected to show ID to anyone who demands it, and go through online hoops to set up a vaccine passport app, will be conditioned to handing away personal data willy-nilly. Fraudsters will find excuses to demand to see covid passes, or other health validation data, and use this to conduct identity theft and phishing.
part 2/2
ReplyDelete*he is anything but a libertarian, he is the most authoritarian dictator seen in living memory in the UK, his whole reign has been about pushing people out from society, none of his cronies are libertarian either, they all want mroe controls over people, not less. No libertarian would be banning protest, no libertarian would be censoring journalists with jail threats, no libertarian would have his absymal record on the treatment of immigrants and the closure of borders to legitmiate trade... Libertarianism may have its troubles, but the actions of Johnson are symptomatic of a much worse ideaology, under libertarianism there may be inequality and blind-eye turning, but atleast there can't be this kind of active oppression. Johnson is increasingly removing citizen's recoures against government abuses, he is scrapping judicial review, introducing voter ID, preventing broadcasters discussing alternative arguments in the covid debate (such as Great Barrington and Heneghan's work)... there is not enough democratic function still left in the UK's hollowed out previously independent institutions to prevent him conducting his dictatorial dreams. This has to be stopepd by stopping vaccine pasports or we will never see any good aspects of the "old normal" again in our lifetimes.
I'll include this too as a summary of some of my arguments
https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/campaigns/stopvaccinepassports/#
P.S. this is a bit older a document, and america rather than UK/europe focused, but this is woth a read too.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/privacy/pemic_report.pdf
shows the risks involved in choosing to police a pandemic rather than treat it. Goes in to some interesting details on how whilst nobody wants to catch a pandemic disease, people can become a lot more willing to break rules when manipulated, pushed around and controlled rather than asked, explained to and encouraged. Vaccine passports for anything other than international travel, and that includes passes based on tests and netrual immunity from past cases as well as vaccines, seem to be symptomatic of that dangerous, enforcement based type of government thinking.
All licenses and IDs must exist in an independent database for verification, otherwise they'd be useless. There is no other way any license can function. You don't get a physical driving license which becomes invalid only if the police confiscate it; there is by your logic already nothing to stop the government freezing your assets, banning you from driving, taking away your library card... all because they just don't like you. Unless you really go hardcore off the grid and store your cash under a mattress and live in a cave, it's not all that difficult for the government to track you down if they really want to. Guess what ? They don't. Why would they ? It would serve them no advantage. Likewise, almost all European countries have a EU-wide identity card and haven't degenerated into authoritarian hell-holes. Rather than being a slippery slope, it's a plateau : because everything you're worried about already exists. It just doesn't and isn't going to happen.
DeleteI don't think you can generalise what should be mandatory and what should be voluntarily as simply as you do here. What is mandatory isn't always seen as bad, nor is what's voluntary seen as good. We ALL support mandatory driving or medical licenses - not (just) because we want to punish people for poor driving or medical malpractice, but rather to encourage right action. We want to know that everyone on the road is basically able to drive safely, and aren't likely to come out worse from the doctor than when we went in. And they aren't driving safely or doing surgery correctly out of fear of punishment ! What is set by law is perceived to be necessary. It's not ALL about punishing transgressors. Hence numerous polls showing the public favour mandatory mask requirements.
(Yes, sometimes compulsion backfires and persuasion is ALWAYS preferable - my point is only that the general conditions are incredibly difficult to set out.)
The relevant figure for herd immunity is how much protection the vaccine gives against the virus, not hospitalisation rates. Not everyone is vaccinated yet or able to be vaccinated at all.
Johnson's libertarian/authoritarian tendencies aren't mutually exclusive. More on this in a future post, but as in the other thread, a certain sort of libertarian tends towards the strongman : everyone should be free to take what they can get, and if they can get it, so be it. Quite distinct from classical liberalism.
As I said, there are forms of vaccine passports it would be sensible to oppose, but to be honest I think on this particular issue you're being extremely paranoid : it is not sensible to be opposed to ALL forms of ID, as you seem to be doing. If international passports are okay, then what's the problem with domestic ones ? I'm sorry, I do genuinely respect and value your input, but most of what you've said here is nothing more than a flight of fancy. The current so-called government is awful and I hate it. But it's not what you think it is, because that is incoherent and just doesn't make any sense to me at all.