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.
This is a classic demonstration that "slippery slope" isn't a fallacy.
First you need a driving license. Privacy conscious people objected. You don't need to show your driving license to drive, was the response, only if you break traffic laws or get into an accident. There's no one using it to track everywhere you go or anything.
Then comes the vaccine passport. Privacy conscious people object. Now the response is, hey, you already have to show your driving license if you get pulled over for speeding, what's the difference? And you don't have to show your vaccine passport if you, um, never go outside again.
Meanwhile we now have ALPR cameras recording the location history of every vehicle on the roads. Because some slopes are actually slippery.
The main objections to vaccine passports in England aren't privacy, they're that it discriminates against those who refuse to get vaccinated.
>And you don't have to show your vaccine passport if you, um, never go outside again.
You'd have to show your vaccine passport if you want to partake in proportionately high risk activities where you not only have risk to yourself, but you also pose a risk to others. And it's [almost] always places you have to take ID anyway, to prove your age.
Why should those who chose to not do the socially responsible thing of getting vaccinated, get to amplify the risk to those who do?
Plenty of Canadians, like myself, have huge objections to the privacy implications of our passport program.
What's ironic is that people who usually call out slippery slope as being a fallacy are participating in the fallacy of cherry-picking. Because slippery slope is only a fallacy when there is no prior evidence of the proposed events occurring, and 99.9% of the time people say "that's a slippery slope", it's in response to events that are similar to past events.
Proving an unrelated fact about yourself solely because the government thinks so is a different thing.
Online, this fight-or-flight response manifests as people downvoting you, flagging you, doxxing you, and so on for presenting hard-to-refuse facts and arguments contrary to any entrenched but incorrect narrative.
The problem is exacerbated on HN by high-karma accounts having the ability to flag discussions to death without engagement and essentially end them unilaterally.
Showing an ID to drink or get a senior discount isn’t about identifying you specifically just something about you and that is completely accepted by the general public. Show your military ID to get a discount is another.
The issue I take with such pedantic exceptions is they derail the thread.
Edit: This is a far more direct response which I upvoted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28501323
My two line "no, those things are different to this thing" is responding both directly to the thrust of the argument and with an appropriate amount of effort.
Saying X is usually Y, doesn’t actually mean showing ID to demonstrate an unrelated fact is somehow unusual.
My argument isn't that, there is no level of imprecision where I'd be satisfied. I went straight to the substance which is the examples listed are acceptable in ways that a vaccine mandate is not.
It is perfectly reasonable to expect proof that someone is who they say they are when picking up a parcel or borrowing a book in their own name. It isn't like it is information that they aren't implicitly volunteering as part of the transaction. Ditto ID for a hotel stay to an extent, the normal case for a hotel stay is you have already identified yourself to the hotel.
There is a fair comparison when it comes to drivers licenses (I echo Mr Mouse's argument there). But 25% relevant examples is not a good batting average. And it isn't pedantry to point that out, it is routine argumentativeness. The complaint against vaccine passports is people are being forced to reveal information about themselves that they may not want to. I don't want to have to start registering information about myself with the government to have a pub lunch; the risk for those systems to go bad is off the charts high.
There's two components to this.
1. It's widely accepted because in most cases the cashier just glaces at the ID. How is the vaccine passport going to be implemented? Are they going to give you a laminated ID card, or is it going to be some QR code thingy on your phone? The latter would necessitate some sort machine scanner, which would mean it's trivially easy to turn this into some sort of a tracking system.
2. "being 18" isn't a medical intervention that's forced onto people.
The situation is likely different in the United States, but in Germany the youths solve this problem (under 16's/18's cannot buy alcohol) simply by the fact that always some friend has an older brother or sister.
But we're clearly accepting the idea of giving up way more information in the former case even though all that's needed is the boolean, so why the fuss around the vaccines when they're ultimately also after a boolean?
Last time I booked a hotel via an app at the last minute for an overnight stay after going to the pub in a city away from home, the booking process didn't mention we needed to show our passports at reception. It was a new policy for that hotel.
When we went to the hotel, about midnight, of course we didn't have passports with us, why would we? It's not normal to take your passport when visiting a neighbouring city for a night out.
I've stayed at countless hotels, and never had this problem before. But I understand the UK is becoming more draconian so perhaps a rule had kicked in since the previous time I went to a hotel. But I had the impression, it was a recent policy change by this hotel, and "oh, we should update our website".
It was pouring with rain, there were no other hotels accepting bookings by then, and the last train home would be in a few hours. Our Uber had dropped us off, and hotel reception was telling us we had to go outside into to the pouring rain as we couldn't stay despite having paid.
They knew perfectly well who we were. It wasn't an identity thing. We were able to show booking numbers, credit cards, confirm emails, and other forms of identity. But not the type their new policy required.
They required every guest's passport, not just one person. As luck would have it, we each spent about an hour trawling through the contents on our electronic devices and online, and we each found images of our passports in some location or other because of the ubiquitous requests for photos of passports these days, and those photos were accepted by the hotel.
A few years back, I got in a tight situation. I had a last minute trip and, among other things, didn't grab the little travel folder which I have with backup ID, credit cards, etc.
Get my license out in the back of the car for TSA. Somehow I managed to lose it between there and the airport doors. Called the driver. They looked no luck. No idea what happened.
To my considerable surprise, the TSA let me fly with no real hassle. (Rules may have tightened.)
But when I got to the crappy Travelodge motel on the other side--no luck. I assume I would have had better luck at one of my regular chains but they didn't want to budge in spite of a wallet full of other cards and a photo company ID.
I wasn't sure where I was going to sleep but they eventually relented so long as I paid cash. Fortunately the cost was relatively low enough I was able to get enough of an ATM. (I didn't have photos on my phone.)
Airbnbs near SFO at San Mateo or Burlingame is just as expensive as hotels anyway!
I don't think you live in the UK - because none of those things are true.
You can go into just about any library and read a book without showing a library card.
I've never had to show ID for a hotel stay.
My driving licence stays at home. If I want to hire a car, I generate a one-time code.
I can pick up a parcel by showing some non-ID like a bank card, utility bill, etc.
The GP comment said "driving a car," not hiring one. It's not clear to me why you responded to a different assertion, and I can't find anything that supports the idea that you don't need to show a driving license while driving if it's requested.
https://www.gov.uk/stopped-by-police-while-driving-your-righ...
"If you do not have these documents with you, you have 7 days to take them to a police station. You’re breaking the law if you do not show the requested documents within 7 days."
> You can go into just about any library and read a book without showing a library card.
If I may be so bold, I think it's fairly reasonable to understand their comment (in the context of requiring ID) as referring to checking out/borrowing books from a library to read, rather than simply reading them in a library.
Have you ever applied for a library card? Most libraries will give you one without any verifiable form of ID. And the card itself certainly isn't ID.
It would likely be difficult to buy a car without it, and obviously you could not rent it (yes, code and blabla, it's just a proxy for it).
> Have you ever applied for a library card?
Yes, and in fact they were pretty fastidious with validating that I lived in the area they serve (that might be because I have a funny accent, but still). I don't remember how I managed to get it, eventually - likely with the usual utility bills, which here work exactly as ID would, as long as you have a pair of them. Their use for this is extremely problematic.
Did you definitely mean this? I have never had to present a driving license to buy a car. I don't see the link; the license isn't to own a car, it's to drive one. Unless you're thinking of places where one does need a license just to own a vehicle?
Many people might also not know that it's against the law to carry a driving licence that is not perfectly up-to-date regarding your address details.
Coming from Italy, a country with strong ID card requirements (because of Napoleonic attitudes compounded by actual Fascism), the UK situation looks to me idealistic, naive, pragmatically disastrous, and only very occasionally safer (ID-card fraud in Italy is an actual problem the UK does not have, but the practice of validating identity with house bills in the UK is even more open to abuse). I expect we'll eventually get something that works like an ID card, looks like an ID card, but it's not called an ID card - possibly owned and operated by banks, who are the real authorities here.
He was Home Secretary before being Chancellor, and in that role opted to keep up the Hostile Environment policies and Deport First, Appeal Later policies.
I mention those two, because they are indicative of a "papers please" type of culture.
The former requires every minor landlord to perform a "right to rent" check on every tenant or lodger they suspect to be not British, or face a large fine. Inevitably leading to landlords choosing not to rent to non-British people to avoid the hassle and risk of getting it wrong, an increase in homelessness among people without the right papers to prove they're allowed to pay for a home, and an increase in abusive housing relationships.
The latter ensure that illegal actions by the Home Office go unchallenged despite statistics showing the Home Office often acts unlawfully and often loses in court. It's very difficult for a person to conduct an appeal after they're removed from their own documents at home, legal support, income, friends, and other resources; this is also borne out in statistics: No appeal lodged in this way has succeeded, which stands in stark contrast to appeals lodged in country. (The UK Supreme Court just ruled this policy unlawful. I expect the Home Office will try to continue the policy anyway.)
Point is, Javid said he was going to address injustices in the immigration department when he became Home Secretary, and then he didn't.
The alternative was to see them close one by one, I’m personally very happy with the way the EU vaccine pass has been implemented.
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 the choices that they have made.
Anybody can get a vaccine that keeps them out of the hospital or dying. There is no reason for a vaccinated individual to give a single hoot about the vaccination status of person next to them.
The idea that the vaccinated population needs to be "protected" from all the unvaccinated individuals is absurd. Covid is here forever and we will all probably catch it at some point. If you are vaccinated you'll at least not have any serious complications from it, which is pretty damn good...
So yeah, I haven't the faintest idea who vaccine passports actually protect?
Also, all these pro-mandate arguments never discuss if boosters will be required to remain a "vaccinated" status. Does that mean we are now obligated to get a booster every time it comes out?
And when does this all go away? At what point to we drop this stuff? Or are we seriously gonna be "carded" at the door of every business from here on out? Again, covid is here forever and there will always be some level of "cases" provided we continue testing for it...
If there was a good reason for it, possibly. But this is a ridiculous analogy, because there is no plausible reason for this. On the other hand, there is a good reason for strongly encouraging people to get the vaccine, as well as an excellent reason to restrain pro-virus people from spreading it more.
When is the last time you had to show papers to go to a McDonalds, a clothing store or a museum?
Forcing medical interventions in the name of the public good has always degenerated in the worse atrocities and abuses in history.
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.
[1] - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.20.21260795v...
Where my sympathies really like is with people who *want" the vaccine but cannot get one due to circumstances (no paid time off, live in an inaccessible area, under the control of an anti-vaxxer, etc.)
Care to expand what these "scientific" reasons are?
What's the bar for full approval? Whatever the FDA says it is. Usually that includes convening the advisory committee. That didn't happen. Recently, 3 members resigned from said committee. While these resignations weren't about the vaccines, they were about a lack of trust in FDA (interim) leadership.
If you want to continue to believe everything is just okie-dokie, knock yourself out, but you're not going to convince anyone.
Seeing as how I'm in Germany and I have close friends at RKI, I choose to believe them - as they are unequivocally the experts on the topic - over American politics.
> but you're not going to convince anyone.
Please argue in good faith next time.
The general public doesn’t understand that expedited approval was a well understood category years before COVID and designed exactly for situations like this. Check the way back machine of your feeling paranoid.
As to the actual science we have vastly more data on COVID vaccinations than most drugs or vaccines the FDA is approving. It really isn’t some ad hoc process it’s well designed procedures and massive quantities of scientific data.
People can refuse medical treatments, even if deemed in their utmost interest.
The FDA does quite a bit of outreach over heath and food safety because information has real public health implications. Ex: https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/selecting...
Which isn’t to say their doing a great job, just that they consider it part of their mandate and they get funding for it.
The drug companies are not only under total immunity but also will get paid regardless if the vaccine works or not in the long term. The reporting of adverse effects is probably getting suppressed, for example OSHA is now admitting it won't record vaccines adverse effects so it doesn't discourage vaccinations (https://ogletree.com/insights/osha-revokes-guidance-on-recor...). There were vaccines that were deemed "safe" yet were scrapped because they weren't (Dengue vaccine, Guillain-Barré of the 1979 flu vaccines).
The immunity of the vaccines is fading after a few months and Pfizer is now talking about bi-annual booster shots and daily pills.
Personally I got my two shots of Pfizer, which is considered the safest, because it made sense to me. But even then I got adverse effects making me not want another booster shot. Calling people "anti-vaxxers" is because they do not want to take an experimental vaccines (mRNA vaccines are not vaccines in the traditional definition) is just intellectual laziness.
Vaccines almost never have long term side effects, and there is no reason to believe the vaccines at hand have any reason to have any. But maybe it does. What's the probability? Based on those priors, extremely low. Not zero, but extremely low.
The disease, on the other hand, definitely has long term side effects. We know that.
If the risk of infection was low, you'd have a point. Maybe. But the fact is, without vaccine, everyone stands a very significant chance of getting infected. The very small risk of long term side effects is just ridiculous compared to those of the disease, and unlike the vaccine, the disease does not care about your "freedom."
[1] - https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history....
GP simply stated that we should be consulting experts in the fields, not laypeople, when it comes to things of a scientific nature.
These were your words, not theirs.
> If it’s not a PhD in biochemistry or something similar, then it’s not relevant to their decision making abilities
In my opinion, that is much closer to "if you don't have a PhD in biochemistry, you can't don't deserve to make a decision (i.e. stupid)" than "listen to experts".
Because it's pointless, and because the pandemic is killing people right now, not whenever some arbitrary administrative milestone is achieved. But most importantly, because people who bring that point up are typically completely ignorant of what medicine approval entails, why the process is there in the first place, and why it normally takes so long.
Just one element among several: it usually takes a long time because diseases take time to develop and we lack test subjects. Here the disease spread very rapidly, develops insanely fast, and thus judging the efficacy is nearly immediate. As for safety, vaccines almost never have long term side effects, so the risk is low to begin with, whereas the risks of the disease are huge.
In short, this is a specious argument, and a ridiculous proposition on the face of it born of ignorance and motivated by a rebeliousness as callous as it's puerile.
The chance of long term effects is not very high. You'll likely survive covid without pneumonia and you'll likely survive the vaccine without an aneurysm.
The reason I was hesitant was: - It doesn't stop the spread - I already had covid / the risks of covid are mostly minuscole for healthy young people - New variants will drop the efficacy
In the end, I did it only because I was planning to travel (which ended up being wise, given the requirements). And I still had to waste money getting tested.
Your medical history is not a "protected right." The people who provide medical care to you are not allowed to release your medical records without your consent.
What are you talking about? It is under the 5h and 14th amendments and under similar rights in other jurisdictions.
https://healthcare.uslegal.com/records/sources-of-protection...
Medical data does have various protections in the US, but it’s far more limited than just blanket protection.
Immunization status is considered protected information according to the HIPAA and the ADA, and similar laws exist in other jurisdictions.
https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/...
https://www.eeoc.gov/wysk/what-you-should-know-about-covid-1...
https://www.hipaajournal.com/is-it-a-hipaa-violation-to-ask-...
The requirement to provide the information says otherwise.
Your sexual orientation is private information your employer can’t ask about, your vaccination status isn’t protected. Providing it can be required for employment.
Your third link even says: The EEOC confirmed “there’s no indication that there’s any federal law that would be violated by the employer asking this question.”. It also in most cases it can be a requirement for employment.
Which requirement?
> Your sexual orientation is private information your employer can’t ask about, your vaccination status isn’t protected. Providing it can be required for employment. Your third link even says: The EEOC confirmed “there’s no indication that there’s any federal law that would be violated by the employer asking this question.”. It also in most cases it can be a requirement for employment.
You're confusing being able to ask and discriminating against vaccination / medical status. The things an employer can't ask are very specific (and numerous). The things an employer can't discriminate against are more broad.
The requirement to provide vaccination status to go to school or be employed.
I think you have some basic confusion here. HIPPA covers your Name, but that’s not in any way inherently protected information. It becomes so in a medical setting because having your name associated with for example an AIDS clinic lets people infer things. As such it’s the association that’s protected not your name.
Then you have examples of the "worst atrocities and abuses in history" that were due to schools requiring vaccinations?
Japan's Unit 731
The Nazi medical experiments
MK Ultra in the US and Canada and elsewhere in the world
Lobotomy and the other psychiatric abuses
The human atomic bomb and nuclear radiation experiments
Tuskegee syphilis experiments
Buck v. Bell which game way to +70k forced sterilizations, which by the way relied upon Jacobson v. Massachusetts where the State forced vaccination upon someone who had adverse effects.
Given the strength which which you made your claim, I thought you would have better evidence to support it.
I do think that the medical attrocities you list have had a lasting and deleterious effect on public trust of government medical ethics and contribute significantly to vaccine hestitancy.
You're making a distinction without making a meaningful difference. They have everything to do with requiring a medical intervention by the state, which has led to abuse in the past. Jacobson led to Bell v. Buck which led to forced sterilizations. And I should have mentioned King Leopold using Congolese as vaccine test subjects.
> Only the last one has any relation to vaccine mandates at all and the causal link there is somewhat tenous given the sordid particulars of Buck v Bell (including the deliberate incompetence of Buck's lawyer). It isn't clear that case would have gone differently without the Jacobsen v. Massachusetts precedent.
Having a bad lawyer is irrelevant the judges still have to know the law. And Jacobson was crucial in the decision because it negated the limit the State has on bodily integrity. Also given that you backup your claims with no arguments, they could simply be dismissed with no arguments, but they needed to be addressed nonetheless.
> Given the strength which which you made your claim, I thought you would have better evidence to support it.
Forced medical procedures lead to abuses. I've given many historical examples. Your counterpoints are not supported by any meaningful counter-examples.
> I do think that the medical attrocities you list have had a lasting and deleterious effect on public trust of government medical ethics and contribute significantly to vaccine hestitancy.
Coercion and total lack of accountability aren't exactly the best marketing strategy.
You made an very strong "always" claim. All that is needed to refute such a claim is a single counter example. I brought up school vaccination requirements because I believe they are an important exception to the principle you put forward. (I could probably have also picked border entry vaccination requirements.)
In my view, you should have made a weaker claim, such as that forced medical interventions have a history of problematic abuse and have lead to atrocities. As a result, new types of forced medical intervention (and generally any type of violation of body sovereignty) should be approached with extre caution.
> Having a bad lawyer is irrelevant the judges still have to know the law.
This is factually and obviously false. If lawyers aren't needed to help judges to decide cases fairly and in accordance with the law, then why so we have them and why do we pay them so much money?
Yes, one party seems to think those of a non-white skin color are unable (through ignorance or lack of access) to obtain any form of ID so they can vote.
ADDED: Is there anything in this statement that is remotely controversial?
Of course it's a system that's ripe for fraud if you can't even identify and record voters reliably.
I don't know how you can think this will introduce any more friction for low income people. You need an ID to drive. You may introduce friction for illegal immigrants and mentally handicapped homeless.
Saying this will affect low income people doesn't make any sense. Saying this will affect black people is plain racist.
Did you actually just call me a racist for very lightly touching on the fact that there's a whole lot of racial history tied in with voting rights in the US?
Maybe you should just keep your mouth closed until you learn something about what the hell you're talking about because you clearly don't.
And I'll let the rest of your words stand by themselves. Many legal US citizens do not drive and do not have government ID. Is it a lot? Probably not but it's enough to drive political decisions around voting where fraud is actually not a serious problem.
But really, don't care that a European thinks we should be required to have an ID to vote.
In the UK (where a requirement for voter ID has been proposed), research shows that up to 3.5 million citizens (7.5% of the electorate do not have a suitable photo ID)[0].
That's a lot of people to disenfranchise.
There's going to be a scheme where people can get a free photo ID from the local government for voting purposes, but it seems questionable whether people will choose to get that when so many don't get something like a driving licence or passport, which you seem to think is essential for people to function in society.
[0] - https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/latest-news-and-research...
[US Federal Government has entered the chat]
That's nothing, we disenfranchised 80 million with our vaccine mandate.
There may be soon - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-57723200 - but it certainly isn't common in the UK.