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Comment by tracedddd | Hacker News Reader

We shouldn’t applaud the normalization of health status checks outside a border crossing. The world has a nasty trend of using crises to erode privacy and we collectively never recover - what was sold as temporary becomes permanent, endlessly extended and expanded.

I’m not an antivaxer. The vaccine works and I believe it’s really safe. I’m vaccinated. Nearly anyone who is capable to go to a bar can easily go get vaccinated. If they don’t, I’m not interested in saving them from themselves, honestly.

If the spread or variant breakthrough or some other aspect is so critical that we need to resort to novel privacy violations we should just shut down again instead.

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The supreme court ruled that it's legal to mandate vaccinations in 1905. Boston fined people for not getting a smallpox vaccine. This seems like a better option to me.

Don't want to get vaccinated? Fine. Have a valid medical reason, pay a $2500 fee, or leave the city.

>90% of people will just get vaccinated.

The result of this would be that many black and latino residents in, for example, the Bronx, would be fined more than they can afford or literally expelled from NYC.

“ >90% of people will just get vaccinated.”

I think there should be federally mandated sick leave for getting the vaccine cuz yeah if you're hourly and get this shot you are paying for it in lost revenue.

So let's make the policy be "you get $500 to get the vaccine or get a doctor's note saying why not. If not you pay a fine". Yeah Bezos gets it (that's why you tax rich people more than poor people, to get the money back later).

Now do you have a problem with this policy?

> We shouldn’t applaud the normalization of health status checks outside a border crossing.

We shouldn’t applaud the normalization of health status checks outside of a global pandemic.

People see this as a way to go back to the movies again without having to feel guilty about potentially killing someone's grandma. This is an alternative to going back into lockdown.

I'm genuinely curious: what are your privacy concerns here?

I like to think I'm a privacy-minded person, and I can't imagine how the benefits of this policy (keeping things open, preventing hospitalizations, saving lives) wouldn't possibly outweigh the cons (having to bring a vaccine card to a concert).

The first paragraph is how I feel. I'm vaccinated, but fat luck asking to see the card. I almost laughed when it was suggested to me at the vaccination site, by the administrating nurse, that I should get it laminated and put it on a lanyard.

What sort of things will health checks be used for in the future? Once Covid is gone, I don't think people will really care about your health information beyond entities that already care (health insurance providers denying coverage because of preexisting conditions, etc.) Certainly, The Mets won't care if you got your flu shot this year, and your local bar probably won't care that you didn't get your annual physical. If unrelated companies start caring about your health information after the pandemic, we should tell them to fuck off.

Covid is a public health crisis -- the single most dangerous existential threat we as a society are currently facing -- and we have great tools to kill it dead. Letting it spread right now is just stupid, because we can end this plague once and for all. While we're working on it, I think it's totally fair to let someone check your vaccination status before you pack yourself into close quarters with them. It's not a matter of the government or the corporate overlords wanting your health information. As the person standing next to you in a crowded bar, I don't want you there if you're not vaccinated. If indoor businesses won't check customers, then I won't go to those indoor businesses, and if enough people think like me, those businesses are gone forever.

Get vaccinated or stay home. You have a choice!

(The real threat during crises like these is things like "we shouldn't have a free press, because nutjobs are spreading misinformation". That is an exceedingly dangerous line of thinking and we should push back against that hard, because the cure is worse than the disease. That's not the case with Covid -- the cure is much better than the disease.)

We could honestly probably save billions in healthcare costs if we mandated a yearly physical and cancer screening. It would lift our economy catching these costly diseases and health issues while they are still easily and cheaply treatable.

You'd also save billions, if you forced diets on people, forbid cigarettes, stopped selling sugar water with colorings, forbid driving, forbid skiing, hiking, climbing, and all other dangerous sports, keep social isolation every flu season, forbid casual sex (stds, unwanted children),... you'd just somehow have to stop suicides in the end.

Why? Suicides would save you even more. Corpse removal would get cheaper at scale.

All that money would be gone towards border control, though.

The solution here is for healthcare coverage to offer you a discount if you submit to any testing that the parent comment said was mandatory. That gives you the freedom to take on more risk at personal financial cost to yourself

> What sort of things will health checks be used for in the future? Once Covid is gone (…)

Will it be gone? As far as I understand, the Delta variant remains contagious even among vaccinated people, so it will likely stay around. Now that there’s vaccines, it’s just less dangerous (to the vaccinated). But any system of health checks you set up now could stay in place for a long time.

> The Mets won't care if you got your flu shot this year

The flu shot is a pretty interesting example. People die all the time because others didn’t get their flu shot. Where I live only half of the healthcare workers get it. The Mets could save lives by requiring that their patrons get it. And yet we don’t get very worked up about these jabs. Maybe covid showed us that we should? I don’t know, but it shows that covid isn’t some unique phenomenon, and that the way we deal with will have repercussions how we deal with other health issues going forward.

If this were an existential threat to society maybe that would justify mandatory vaccination, but it’s not even close to that. Even the most badly battered countries have not only managed to survive, but found a way to cope with the pandemic.

Once a system is in place, it'll be repurposed and never go away. Also, "Once Covid is gone". By what metric will it be "gone"? Are you talking zero COVID? That's never ever happening.

Macron in France set the goal at 90% vaccination. At that level across a continent, Covid could be gone.

Rule #1 in politics: Always set the bar to success at idealistic level, so you can fail and blame it on the scapegoats who didn’t trust the government. “BECAUSE some people didn’t vaccinate, we must lock down everyone again and ruin your economy. Blame it on them!” (Mao revolution failed because there were still some naysayers; Saving women fails because there are still some men opposed to true equality defined by unreachable levels of compliance, etc).

But politicians are talented: When you can’t actually solve a crisis (and Covid can’t be solved because it’s out there, now), you’d better quickly find a scapegoat to concentrate everyone’s blame on.

> Once Covid is gone

It will never be completely gone though, like terrorism.

You're exaggerating. COVID-19 is a serious public health problem that we need to address, but in no way an existential crisis. CDC data shows an overall 99.6% survival rate, with the vast majority of deaths being elderly people with serious co-morbid conditions.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

Due to privacy concerns I certainly won't be sharing my health information with random businesses.

> Once Covid is gone,

Covid will _never_ be gone.

Ever.

Do you not show your ID at a bar? What privacy are you giving up here?

Do they scan it with a call to the cloud to verify it? That's the real threat here - continuous tracking, ability to turn it off or geo fence you to a certain area.

I'm not sure the implentation but I have gotten my ID scanned to get into places and to buy lotto tickets

Do you pay cash for everything? nnever use a credit card? Don't fly?

All of those kinds of transactions are voluntary with anonymous alternatives except for flying. This will become a scanable thing because if it doesn't it won't be a workable system.

BTW I'm opposed to scanning for flying too. No fly lists are an example that came out of this practice. They'll do the same with this new system - no go lists for those with a low enough social credit score.

Actually, I lived in a texas county where some (all?) of the bars required ID scans that I can only assume called the cloud to verify/store data

Time to hit the liquor store. ;-)

The EU-style vaccination certificates can be locally verified. No data goes to the cloud, and the software is, for many countries, open source.

ID scans at bars have been normal for at least decade. Have you really never had your ID scanned? I find that hard to believe.

I hate it. There's no good reason to scan my ID when I'm very obviously of legal age. Some of the bars do this for tracking data and to sell your personal info. Some of the bars are lazy and it's a relatively straightforward way to validate your card.

There's a good reason to validate that I have a vaccine, though, because my presence there affects the life of the staff and other customers. I'm not giving up freedom here, because it's not my freedom to put others at risk, and they shouldn't have the freedom to put mine at risk.

Your slippery slope arguments are also really bad. You can already be (and already are) tracked by your cell phone at all times. We don't need vaccine checks to do it. If the scary government was going to come get you, they have more than enough at their disposal currently to do it.

Nope, one guy at a festival was about to try and I didn't allow it. Handed me to his boss who checked it manually.

> Nearly anyone who is capable to go to a bar can easily go get vaccinated.

It’s too risky to themselves and others for unvaccinated people to drive to a bar to drink alcohol. Ha. Similar to swabbing the injection site for lethal injections to avoid infections.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

Pointing out a slippery slope doesn’t mean it isn’t worth considering the consequences.

My position is indeed speculative, however it’s not without evidence. We very rarely regain rights or freedoms when they are taken so I think it’s valid to be concerned about the same thing happening here.

> not without evidence

Please give examples

Patriot Act.

Didn't the Patriot Act fail to get reauthorization on its last expiration?

Granted, ~20 years is a pretty good run.

Letting the US Government, at the behest of the President, wage war nearly anytime it feels like it, without prior authorization of Congress. Slippery slope meet the forever war machine.

Trade & tariff conflicts of the 1930s, which spiraled from a smaller economic conflict into a larger economic conflict and into the great depression. All because the government was given too much leash to run with.

Letting the government (and Fed) bail out Wall Street repeatedly and institutionalize too big to fail as an economic policy.

The US Government specializes in lubricating slopes and speeding down them.

Six months ago, I was routinely told that my fears of vaccine passports were "conspiracy theory", and the same arguments about the slippery slope were invoked.

At some point, you just have to look down and notice that the slope of the ground is negative, and everything is greasy.

What’s bad about a vaccine passport? Do you think unvaccinated people should be allowed to travel internationally? Isn’t that really dangerous?

> What’s bad about a vaccine passport?

Other people have covered that in many comments throughout this thread. I personally don't want to live in a world where I am asked to show my papers -- whatever those papers may be -- to participate in daily life.

> Do you think unvaccinated people should be allowed to travel internationally?

I think so, but it's certainly within the rights of any nation to choose the rules by which foreigners may enter their country. I care less about this than I do about having to show a "passport" to get food.

> Isn’t that really dangerous?

In a highly vaccinated population? No. That's the point of vaccines. Once the threat of (involuntary) serious and illness and death has been abrogated, SARS-CoV2 takes its place amongst the pantheon of other respiratory viruses that we have lived with for centuries.

> I personally don't want to live in a world where I am asked to show my papers -- whatever those papers may be -- to participate in daily life.

Has that participation ever involved travel to another country? Standard passports exist for very good reasons... otherwise, there wouldn't be 100% of nations who depend on them (are there even any nations that don't ask for one?)

I also don't want to live in a world where I have to show my papers to participate in daily life. You know what I even want less? To live in a world where daily life is implicitly restricted because there is a constant danger for me and others to get severely sick.

And most western countries are still far to far from being highly vaccinated. If they were, we wouldn't need to ask for their vaccination status.

Yes, long term we either manage to actually erradicate SARS-Cov-2 or at least reduce it to the group of all the other dangerous viruses we can deal with. If the vaccination rate is high enough. Think measels. They didn't ever go away, but for many years, they were not a problem. They are back due to too many people who think they can skip the vaccinations.

And if you ever tried to go onto international, especially intercontinental travel, many countries require proof of vaccination against a variety of diseases.

> And most western countries are still far to far from being highly vaccinated. If they were, we wouldn't need to ask for their vaccination status.

We're not talking about "most western countries"...we're talking about New York City, where 72% of the adult population has had at least one dose, and about 0.2% get another dose, every day:

https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-vaccines.p...

The relevant number unfortunately is the percentage of the total population which got two shots. One shot is unfortunately no longer good enough against the delta variant. And for transmission, the whole population has to be counted in. And then the numbers might be 60% or less, which isn't quite enought to be a robust blocker against the delta variant. Without the variants, especially the delta one, the battle against SARS-Cov-2 might already be won, but the virus shifted the goalpost, so to say.

66.3% of NYC adults are fully vaccinated as of today. And 0.2% are getting new shots every day (and have been for a while).

It's all on the same page I linked.

Which clearly says that just 55% of the population got two shots. That matches well with what I said in my previous post. 45% of the population did not get two shots yet and can spread the virus unblocked. As the quickly climbing incidence numbers show.

That's all ages, including those who cannot get vaccinated at this time. Of adults, the number is as I stated.

That is equally right as irrelevant. For the transmission of the disease the total population counts. The virus doesn't distinguish between humans who can get vaccinated as by FDA decision and who not.

You have to show your ID to go to a bar. Similarly to go to a stadium, or to fly. The latter is security theatre specifically done for the protection of others. The security theatre is nearly completely useless, but it's commonplace.

I don't want to be around people who can make me sick. If I go to a restaurant and I'm vaccinated, and everyone else is as well, it's very unlikely I will make others sick or that they'll make me sick. If you go, you may make vaccinated or unvaccinated people sick, and they may make you sick.

You're the one that's intruding on other people's freedoms here.

> You have to show your ID to go to a bar. Similarly to go to a stadium, or to fly. The latter is security theatre specifically done for the protection of others. The security theatre is nearly completely useless, but it's commonplace.

Well, first...I'm not sure why you think I support those other things? If your argument is that I'm a hypocrite, you might be disappointed to find out that I'm not. If your argument is that because we do those other things, we should do this thing...well, my goodness. That is a slippery slope, isn't it?

But perhaps more importantly, there's an obvious, bright-line difference between drinking alcohol in a bar or flying on a plane, and having to show papers to do 99% of the things I do on a daily basis.

In slovenia, you need a vaccine passport (or a <48h old test) to drink coffee outside, infront of the cafe, in fresh air... yes, we're sliding deep and fast.

Vaccinated people can still spread the virus according to the CDC. This is just an endemic thing we have to live with.

Should we also check vaccine passports for people who cross the border illegally?

This was actually why I got vaccinated. I would hope that other countries (including ours) doesn't require vaccinations as an entry requirement. But I don't have much of a say over what another countries laws are.

"Interpreting" the Interstate Commerce Clause to grant the Federal Government the power to regulate controlled substances?

At this point, there is no power conceivable that the Federal government could not claim under the umbrella of "it might affect commerce somewhere".

Most of the powers the Federal government has seized from the states have been rationalized under the ICC. Like making it illegal for a farmer to grow wheat on his own farm to feed his own animals. [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn

That's a fun one:

> The Court decided that Filburn's wheat-growing activities reduced the amount of wheat he would buy for animal feed on the open market, which is traded nationally, is thus interstate, and is therefore within the scope of the Commerce Clause. Although Filburn's relatively small amount of production of more wheat than he was allotted would not affect interstate commerce itself, the cumulative actions of thousands of other farmers like Filburn would become substantial. Therefore the Court decided that the federal government could regulate Filburn's production.

> We very rarely regain rights or freedoms when they are taken so I think it’s valid to be concerned about the same thing happening here.

The doctors who gained, then lost, police powers to enforce quarantine during the "Spanish Flu" would like to have a word

I don't know, at some point, you have to look at every example of "slippery slope" over the past decades and realize that they've all been true.

Emphasis on the last year and half, too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

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