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England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

bbc.co.uk

121–130 of 460 posts

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#121
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tbh the document and qr code are trivial to generate and forge from what i remember. I'm not condoning it i'm just pointing out its weakness.

They're not based on public key crypto like in the rest of the world?

They are. They’re trivial to create with your own issuer but not to forge an existing issuer, unless their private key is leaked.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#122
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blood donors are going to be underrepresentative of people with a fear of needles, people who don't trust the medical system, and be overrepresentative of selfless people. I suspect an extremely strong correlation between giving blood and being vaccinated.

I agree that there must be a strong correlation. I had a classmate who was horrified to learn I checked the organ donor box in my driver's license. Their parents told them if you check that box, the medical staff will be more likely to let you die so they can reuse your parts. I did't have any authoritative answer but the point is there are people out there with fears that sound rational but are completely in the rea…

If you're not able to refute their statement why would you dismiss it as a 'conspiracy theory'?

In fact your classmate is correct, you also need to be 'alive' for your organs to be harvested, there's an entire ongoing field of debate in the medical community about the ethics of this, which a quick peruse of the literature will get you upto speed on.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#123
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very true. I personally find it mad that the UK is the nation with the highest covid infection rate in western europe, with ~30k new cases/day. Long covid is a real, debilitating condition and if anything is going to affect the young -- who are least vaccinated -- the most, thus creating a long-term disease burden and morbidity cost on both those individuals and the country as a whole. Ignoring the human cost…

I think we are long past "short" anything related to COVID. It is now clearly endemic and will persist indefinitely. People need to make their own decisions on how to protect themselves and get on with their lives.

So should we invest in vastly increasing hospital staffing and facilities because the current ICU loads are the new normal?

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#124

The thing that people seem to be ignoring in all of this is that people like having power. The vaccines are helpful to the recipient, but unless you are successful at completely shutting down travel to the rest of the world: not really that helpful to the people who haven't taken them. In fact, there is an argument for how over-vaccinating will be harmful to the unvaccinated. If you're vaccinated, you can still get a…

Wouldn’t another reason be to reduce cost? It’s expensive to treat covid patients and the vaccine is proven to reduce the incidents of hospitalization. But I’m willing to forgo all vaccine mandates, mask mandates, etc if we can all agree that unvaccinated have to pay for their own treatment or buy bespoke covid insurance.

Can you think of a solution that doesn't just allow government officials to profit even more?

If you build in a system where the government can extract profit by not complying with their actions, what makes you think you wont someday find yourself on the wrong side of those actions?

Keep in mind, your side might not always be the one in control and once you hand over extra power to the government it's extremely rare for them to hand it back to you.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#125

The thing that people seem to be ignoring in all of this is that people like having power. The vaccines are helpful to the recipient, but unless you are successful at completely shutting down travel to the rest of the world: not really that helpful to the people who haven't taken them. In fact, there is an argument for how over-vaccinating will be harmful to the unvaccinated. If you're vaccinated, you can still get a…

It's completely and incontrovertibly bullshit that vaccines don't help unvaccinated people.

Vaccines drastically reduce hospitalisation. That frees up medical resources for everyone, especially those who aren't vaccinated and those that need care.

We are already seeing medical procedures get postponed and hospital staff being pushed at the breaking point. The help to your community of being vaccinated is simply huge.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#126
post #39

> "I've never liked the idea of saying to people you must show your papers or something to do what is just an everyday activity, but we were right to properly look at it. We regularly show papers for everyday activities - library card for reading books, ID for a hotel stay, driving license for driving a car, ID to pickup a parcel etc.

Would you be okay with a card showing your religious affiliation before being allowed into a crowded public space? Or before being allowed to rent a truck, or buy fertilizer? Even though this would likely make the world safer: I wouldn't, and even though it wouldn't prevent me from doing anything, I would still resist it. But it would increase my safety, even though it would inconvenience some other people based on t…

Why do you think it would increase your safety? That's not at all obvious to me.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#127

The thing that people seem to be ignoring in all of this is that people like having power. The vaccines are helpful to the recipient, but unless you are successful at completely shutting down travel to the rest of the world: not really that helpful to the people who haven't taken them. In fact, there is an argument for how over-vaccinating will be harmful to the unvaccinated. If you're vaccinated, you can still get a…

All the data suggests that vaccines significantly reduce transmission, both by decreasing the likelihood of infection and onward transmission from vaccinated individuals.

Additionally, anything that incentivizes more people to get the vaccine will result in higher uptake, which benefits everyone in terms of lower overall spread and hospital usage.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#128

The thing that people seem to be ignoring in all of this is that people like having power. The vaccines are helpful to the recipient, but unless you are successful at completely shutting down travel to the rest of the world: not really that helpful to the people who haven't taken them. In fact, there is an argument for how over-vaccinating will be harmful to the unvaccinated. If you're vaccinated, you can still get a…

In addition to the power, don’t forget the pseudo celebrity status that many formerly ignored politicians and bureaucrats have enjoyed. The hour long daily briefings rarely contain any new information and are nothing but pure ego and attention seeking. Exactly like a movie star whose time is passing, you should bet they will do whatever it takes to stay in the spotlight and stay relevant.

The daily briefings in NSW (Australia) ceased this week and there was immediate criticism that it was a vital service that should've been maintained.

The media and public create that public brand; the health rep is generally just doing their job. In my state, the relevant person happens to have a recognisable hairstyle. It's not like she has a PR team going out telling people to dress as her for halloween or parties, people just do things like that, then the media covers that, and people send the link around and on it goes. Given the intense reactions that are the norm around this pandemic, I'm sure she'd feel safer without that level of attention.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#129
post #127

The thing that people seem to be ignoring in all of this is that people like having power. The vaccines are helpful to the recipient, but unless you are successful at completely shutting down travel to the rest of the world: not really that helpful to the people who haven't taken them. In fact, there is an argument for how over-vaccinating will be harmful to the unvaccinated. If you're vaccinated, you can still get a…

All the data suggests that vaccines significantly reduce transmission, both by decreasing the likelihood of infection and onward transmission from vaccinated individuals. Additionally, anything that incentivizes more people to get the vaccine will result in higher uptake, which benefits everyone in terms of lower overall spread and hospital usage.

Exactly, the attack rate of vaccinated individuals who are infected is significantly lower.

Re: England vaccine passport plans ditched, health secretary says

#130
post #39

> "I've never liked the idea of saying to people you must show your papers or something to do what is just an everyday activity, but we were right to properly look at it. We regularly show papers for everyday activities - library card for reading books, ID for a hotel stay, driving license for driving a car, ID to pickup a parcel etc.

Those IDs are not meant to 1) show your medical history which is a protected right and 2) is used as a way to coerce a medical intervention which is against free and informed consent. Forcing medical interventions in the name of the public good has always degenerated in the worse atrocities and abuses in history.

> against free and informed consent

This is a problem - it is often not very informed.

As for medical history, we have to show vaccination records for a number of things - school, travel sometimes, certain lines of work.

Proof of vaccination against a highly mutation-prone virus in the midst of a pandemic doesn't reveal anything more about you than it would about anyone else - which is specifically allowed via HIPAA, for example. It's no more medical history than knowing your age.

These points don't really stand up for me. It's like saying "I choose to believe they cause autism, I've been informed by my other Facebook Mom group members, thus I do not consent."

None of it is based on science or rationality, in my opinion.

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