SeaHawg

This has the same likelihood of happening as an actual C19 vaccine (not very likely imho)...

kiwifrequentflyer

How in earth is that even relevant to the discussion?

A yellow fever passport certifies you have been VACCINATED for yellow fever.

Anyone can go get a safe vaccination now. Anti-vaxxers who hate all vaccinations aside.

My point is an immunity passport for a disease we know very little about, including its long term health consequences, that has no vaccination, incentives people to put their short term and long term health at risk and purposefully get sick, so that they won't be financially left behind.

It's a sad world when you are socially disadvantaged for not getting sick.
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Kevin AA

+1

This nonsense has been done before. Let's not do it again.

The Dangerous History of Immunoprivilege

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/o...passports.html

BenA

Note that “no evidence” doesn’t mean it isn’t true - just that we don’t know yet because there hasn’t been enough research done.

Which means it’s too premature to be talking about immunity passports as a concept one way or another, for sure. But it’s important to be crisp about what the terminology means.

The much more relevant quote:

Doppy

I would offer the view that the best time to discuss major changes to how our society operates is early and often.
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Waiting until we're under the gun to make a decision (eg in this case the day one or more strong studies drop saying there is immunity, if this happens) is usually not the best way to make smart and deliberate decisions.

BenA

Sure, I agree with that. It’s too early to implement, but not too early to start planning!

rylan

'No evidence' is just scientist speak for not proven yet.. meaning they won't make a case for or against until there is sufficient studies showing that prior exposure does indeed grant immunity or not.

Unfortunately, with the press these days they take a comment like that and make a big story so it sounds like having antibodies doesn't make you immune, which is not the case. They just don't know, which is the case with most things with the coronavirus.

Beltway2A

Aah yes. We famously remember "no evidence that ingesting bleach cures coronavirus" to mean that scientists simply haven't yet proven that chugging some bleach will cure your infection.

Oh wait, that's not how it works at all.

kiwifrequentflyer

It's really disturbing to me this increased talk of immunity passports. It's creating this idea of an underclass society where you only get to live, if you got sick. It's bizarre. At least in the South Pacific, if our containment measures continue to work, we won't be having to choose between working and vacationing and) or our health.

Presguy

Acknowledging 100% that the scientific jury has not yet completed deliberations, and that the OP asked about boarding an aircraft, not crossing a border.

It seems there's at least a few parallels to the long standing requirement for yellow fever immunizations required by some nations. Requiring documentation of sound health, and being non-infectious, seems to be a idea with precedence and potential to adapt to Covid as we learn how to press on. Certainly the science will take time to catch up re: worth positive antibody tests, vaccine development, herd immunity, etc.

MaxVO

C19 [deleted by moderator] works similar to regular seasonal flu. You can get it more than once, because the virus mutates. There are already documented cases of people recovering from C19, testing negative for the virus, then testing positive again a few weeks later. One can get a flu every year or more than once in the same season.
There will be some residual immune resistance, so that repeat infections [deleted by moderator] at the same viral load) won't be as bad as the first one.

kiwifrequentflyer

The Coronavirus is unlikely to mutate that fast because it is not a flu​​​​​​. Genetically it is very different. The seasonal flu mutates at a much faster rate. Most experts are expecting that immunity for the covid-19 will last at least a year, but no one knows for sure, so making immunity passports and major public health decisions bases on that assumption, is problematic.

doctoravios

I disagree with this quote. There is quite a lot of evidence about antibody-mediated immunity for SARS-CoV-2. Numerous studies have been published as preprints (and some now fully peer reviewed and published in journals) that convalescent serum containing anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies can help clear the virus in people who are infected. These studies do not tell us about active immunity but the fact that antibody transfer helps to clear the virus means there is some evidence that production of neutralising anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies may protect from future infection. To say that there is "no evidence" is not correct.

And the presence/effectiveness of antibodies has nothing to do with with "to guarantee the accuracy of an 'immunity passport'". That is an entirely different issue - i.e. how accurate are serological tests, to what degree does an accurate true positive indicate that you have developed immunity and would be a lower risk of catching/transmitting the virus? Incidentally, antibody mediated immunity does not have to be 100% effective to reduce spread of the virus. Even if it reduces the duration of infection by a few days, that would help tremendously to reduce the spread of the virus.

Whether it is morally right to go down the path of immunity passports (if serological tests were sufficiently accurate) is another matter entirely. And I agree that it is probably not the right path to go down even if it were technically possible. But it isn't right to misuse the phrase "there is not enough evidence" to justify an ethical/moral opinion.

LondonElite

...because double negatives are confusing to a lot of people. Better to be straight than offer some false hopes.

doctoravios

The point is that starting with, "there is currently no evidence" is a loaded statement. Depending on how you end that statement biases your interpretation of it.

A much better phrase would have been, "we do not yet know the extent to which people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection".

Edit:
"No evidence" is a phrase which has plagued the global response to the pandemic. The most infamous example of this is this tweet posted by the WHO early on in the pandemic:


Perhaps if they had instead said, "we do not yet know the extent of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in Wuhan, China" then global leaders may have acted sooner.