the810

The odds are essentially zero. If someone makes a deal in cash with a doctor who will just empty the dose, there is no chance to ever prove the certificate is fake. Of course people are going to do it.

Still, I am very sceptical to vaccination certificates being a thing for more than a couple of months. They don't make sense. Once most people are vaccinated, you can open to everyone.

tom911

What's the threshold for 'most", though? An NPR survey in the US this week found 30% of those surveyed do not plan to be vaccinated. Is a 70% vaccination rate enough to open up travel to all with no testing/vaccination documentation?

exp

This is really discouraging, hearing that WH is balking at coordinating something along the lines of vaccine passports.

But it seems they're only thinking in terms of some centralized big system with all kinds of privacy and security failsafes and linking to state public health agency systems and so on, with the whole system being digital.

They're reportedly talking to tech firms and agencies are surveying each other and so on.

The problem with this approach is that it will take a long time to design and roll out, certainly not likely to be ready before the end of the year if then. So it would be moot for travel this season.

If that's their stance, that there shouldn't be international travel this year even for the vaccinated, there are all kinds of other policy implications. For instance, are they going to bail out the airlines and other travel industry businesses again? Because those airline employees will need to keep getting paid and if flight volume doesn't increase enough, there will be talk of furloughs again by the end of the year.

The EU is said to also be studying some kind of vaccine passport or certification program, not necessarily digital. It doesn't sound like they envision some permanent type of private health data store.

Of course vaccine passports, in paper form, are not new. They is potential for fraud but what are people more likely to do, get vaccinated or create counterfeit documents just to avoid vaccines? It seems like they're being unnecessarily more ambitious than they need to be. The State of Hawaii has been taking negative test results from authorized providers as a way to enter the state and avoid quarantine for a couple of months. It sounds like they put together a web site to which you can upload test result documents or print them out.

I don't know how much fraud they've encountered but it's a system they put together rather quickly, to resuscitate the tourism industry there.

But it's strange that the Biden administration is declining to coordinate efforts and the reasons given is that they can't put together a system robust and secure enough. Probably true, especially in the short term. But the requirements cited by Andy Slavitt sound too ambitious and demanding to be viable for travel this year:

So we may only get some patchwork of implementations from travel industry groups such as IATA.

Other parties have cited inequality, like some people may not have cell phones to use such a system:

So far there hasn't been much push for requiring vaccination status documentation for school or work yet. Israel has a "green pass" to permit the vaccinated to enter certain establishments as well as travel.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/i...ess/index.html

But since when has international travel ever been about equality? Many Americans can't afford or are uninterested. For those who may be unable to get vaccinated for medical reasons, is international travel a high priority for them? If they can't be protected via vaccination, why would they be looking to fly overseas?

Doppy

Most people in the US or UK will be vaccinated in a couple months.

Most people in many countries around the world? Could be a year.

LGWClosedAgain

That seems like Americas problem. Most countries will get over 90% maybe even 95%+ with enough eh... 'public interaction'. If we go from the data from Israel, the virus should be a thing of the past in that country, at which point why would they care who comes in?

tom911

If you want to open US-international travel, there needs to be a solution. Right now the U.S. is just part of the problem.

Barciur

Or Germany's or France's...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...any-us-quarter

Or Poland's...
https://www.barrons.com/news/poles-i...ey-01614107716

I mean, vaccine-skepticism is not just here. There are many people around the world who will simply not get vaccinated and will make up a sizable group in their populations.

LGWClosedAgain

I don't really see how low a vaccination rate in the US affects travel aside for Americans... Keeping tourists/business out when the problem is internal would be odd but there are stranger things going on in the us.

I mean that's how it looks now but once this gets to a later stage in Europe, you'll see the governments rolling out all the bells and whistles which will probably get most of Europe to 90%+. In the US I doubt citizens are as likely to do as they are told and within a month or two supply will exceed demand.

France, Poland and ex soviet countries are among the highest in the world for vaccine skepticism so those are quite cherry picked imo and likely outliers from the rest.

747FC

The experience in Hawaii is that there are numerous people who have been arrested, jailed, fined and then returned on the Mainland on the next available flight after refusing to comply with Quarantine requirements.

LGWClosedAgain

Refusing to comply with Quarantine requirements and having an electronic document that there is no way of proving or disproving as legitimate are not comparable

747FC

I actually did just that...in a limited way.

To the heart of the matter is that there would be great utility to have a Vaccination Passport (whatever the name). Currently, the federal government does not keep vaccination information of any kind in federal storage, and that task is left to individual states via the Immunization Information System (ISS). ISS specifies record keeping requirements. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/programs/iis/index.html

It sure would be great if the Biden administration decided that the benefits of federal integration outweighed perceived risks and implemented a federal registry for those who wanted a Vaccination Passport.

invisible

If you fulfill entry and transfer requirements according to Singapore government- you will be allowed to entry and transit. Vaccination passport will be one of them.

You don’t fulfill the requirements - you won’t. Plain and simple.

i0wnj00

Well, checked my email and looks like Los Angeles County partnered up with Healthvana to provide a digital version of my covid 19 vaccination record, which can be downloaded and added into Apple Wallet. No more white or yellow card, just scan the QR code. I know Healthvana does store the results for the covid 19 tests that I took, however I was surprised (and most happy) that they also expanded this assistance in creating a digital record of my vaccination. For now, I only have one digital card because I only have the first one, I'm not sure what happens if you get the second vaccination but i'll find out soon. I'm glad they got the ball rolling on this because like it or not, I think (and worry) that this will be the next thing you have to show just to participate in certain activities.

Being the idiot I was, I clicked on the download to Apple Wallet when I was using a PC in trying to figure out how to get it in my iPhone, but I finally got it installed on my iPhone.

invisible

It does. People who post group photos on Facebook last year gathered by group of 4 when maxim 2 people were allowed were handled $9000 fine each.

Foreigners, in addition to fines were given 3 days notice to leave Singapore and were prohibited to ever come back.

Leaving your house without a mask you are risking $300 fine on first instance and 6 months jail on second.

catocony

Something like this would take a couple of years, minimum, to implement, and COVID will be a thing of the past by then.