Fake vaccine cards are everywhere. It’s a public health nightmare | Hacker News Reader

Fake vaccine cards are everywhere. It’s a public health nightmare

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35 pointstreycopeland149 comments

I can tell you as a first responder, it doesn't matter. The "vaccine" is a damn joke. I am F**ing exhausted this morning, and I don't care anymore. We are being run in the ground across the country with people quitting left and right.

Fake vaccine cards are the least of our worries. You heard it here first. The emergency medical system is in deep trouble for way too many reasons to enumerate here.

Anecdote time; I responded to the same 200 person retirement home 3 times last night (Thus the "grumpy" tude). "Mask up" signs everywhere, every employee wearing a mask properly, NO visitors for the past month, etc. AND the place is at least 80% infected with Covid. Every resident is "fully vaccinate with boosters"!

The eldery that live there are pissed, we are pissed and the staff is running on fumes. They were told they were getting a vaccine... their definition of vaccine doesn't include still getting the disease, but just a little less sever (which, incidentally has NOT been the case for a lot of them). That doesn't make sense to them or me if I am being honest.

They are sick, some of them really sick. There isn't much we can do except to give them options... stay home and fight the fever/sickness yourself or go to ER and wait for hours (depending on severity of symptoms). We are waiting for transports to the ER for an hour or more as the wall time at ER's explodes due to staffing shortages across the board.

I don't see a difference between what I saw in April, May and June of 2020 and now, with respect to Covid... with the exception of less people willing to work at ER's and EMS. Call numbers are UP massively as everyone thinks covid is going to kill them instantly. Its like people forgot how to take care of a common cold as was the case when Covid hit initially. Treat the fever, drink fluids the second you start feeling bad... don't wait until you have a 104 temp to start taking care of yourself.

I am so jaded with how bad people are at doing ANYTHING for themselves. I often wonder how people have made it to the age of 60, 75, 80 with the kinds of lifestyles I see out there. SO MANY OBESE PEOPLE. SO MANY. You wonder why you are sick? really?

Police around the US are in a similar boat with low morale and resignations. This is how civilization could end: abuse and neglect of essential services, people divided and acting like idiot children, ignoring self-preservation, ready to fight each other over rumors and conspiracy theories, and corrupt and under-communicative political system and leadership.

That's problems of communication (Vaccines: You can get pretty sick but you won't die.) and abusing EMS (fear of being sued hypochondria and not triaging calls enough), not the vaccine.

The vaxx card should've contained anti-forging properties like holograms or security threads, and been maintained electronically at issuance with a QR code for verification purposes. The card itself shouldn't be proof.

People are lucky these cards are so easy to duplicate. It's the only reason many Americans still have some bodily autonomy in the face of pharma and govts colluding in suspicious ways.

I think we are going to find, when the dust settles and this whole era gets studied, that we pinned way too much hope on vaccines and masks and way, WAAY too little was invested in 1. Overall health / Not being obese, 2. General hygiene and staying home when sick, and 3. Avoiding crowds and indoor gatherings. And I say this as one of HN’s huge and unashamed vaccine cheerleaders.

Everyone wants that easy pill (or shot) to “make it go away”. Or the magical mask talisman to wear and ward off evil. But nobody wants to actually make a permanent lifestyle change to end this.

If COVID at the very least serves as a REAL wake up call about our obesity crisis, it would be a miracle outcome for public health.

If we couldn't get people to wear masks in public regularly, how can we expect them to make an even more significant and life impacting change that could better their health?

I'm not sure, but since we've already crossed the Rubicon of denying free association and ability to conduct business on the basis of arbitrary medical status, there's no longer any reason we can't deny the right to purchase calories to those who have clearly consumed too many of them.

BMI mandates and passports to grocery stores and restaurants: yes it's evil, but we've already decided that this particular abrogation of rights is a moral good. So, fuck it. Starve the fatties. The precedent is set, we can do whatever we want if we scream "public health" loudly enough.

> we've already crossed the Rubicon of denying free association and ability to conduct business

We’ve always had this. And its been strongly protected for centuries. And this isn't even the first time its been applied to health (lepers, plague victims, tuberculosis, measles, etc).

Its the right of the business to not associate with someone, for pretty much any reason. A person, outside of government owned businesses, has no inherent right to associate with a business.

>They were told they were getting a vaccine... their definition of vaccine doesn't include still getting the disease, but just a little less sever (which, incidentally has NOT been the case for a lot of them). That doesn't make sense to them or me if I am being honest.

Hasn't this always been the case with the flu shot which I imagine many if not most people in a retirement home have been getting for years?

Flu shots have been around for years, and by now people understand that the effectiveness greatly varies each year, but never being anywhere close to 100%.

COVID19 vaccines, on the other hand, were (contrary to today's frantic efforts to pretend otherwise) always sold as being a) >90% protection and b) ending the pandemic once enough people were vaccinated.

They were sold as >90% effective when introduced.

But it was made abundantly clear that the original vaccines were less effective against newer strains.

Where is the anger directed, exactly? On r/nursing, the general consensus is that practically nobody who's vaccinated and boosted is actually dying, unless they have a lot of other stuff going on: https://www.reddit.com/r/nursing/comments/s5p4g1/how_many_fu...

It seems disingenuous to call the vaccine a "damn joke".

Reddit is your source? Cmon…

Ontario Canada breaks down deaths by vaccination status, which is currently close to 50/50 on a daily basis.

Please stop believing anything on Reddit.

OK, so what you're suggesting is that the thread is full of liars, or is shaped by propaganda. I call BS. First-hand accounts are important.

Also, where are you getting your information from? This is what I could find from a quick search, and it shows unvaccinated deaths 8x higher than fully vaccinated: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1257040/number-covid-dea...

There's https://www.publichealthontario.ca, but I can't find any comparison between vaccinated and unvaccinated deaths.

Sorry for taking long to respond.

I do not believe the thread is full of liars or propaganda, although there is probably some, but I do believe many many people are ill informed and regurgitating headlines they read.

https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/ncov/ep...

Page 16 shows deaths by vaccination status in the last 60 days.

This is a direct result of the (intentionally) punitive nature of vaccine mandates. Broad, heavy-handed actions by the government are the classic spark for societal backlash. A softer approach that focused on positive benefits for having a vax pass versus punishing unvaxxed would probably had better results. Instead, we've pushed (presumably) otherwise law-abiding citizens into using forged documents. This directly undermines the legitimacy of the government - people lose respect for an authority that cannnot enforce its own orders, and these people will be more likely to carry out similar acts of defiance in the future. Considering the political polarization in America, this is not a recipe for success.

Some states tried using positive feedback in the form of lotteries, prizes, or even just paying people to get the vaccine. I don't think those measures were very successful.

I haven't heard of paying people to get vaccinated so I search for it and one of it worked a little bit even when it was a measly $24, which doesn't it really cover the time it takes.

https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/does-paying-people-get-v...

Where did they do it that it failed?

Several US states struggling with vaccination rates paid people $100 to get vaccinated, for example: Louisiana and West Virginia

https://ldh.la.gov/news/SF100-Extended

https://www.wboy.com/news/health/coronavirus/watch-live-wv-g...

Yet, their vaccination rates still largely follow their political predispositions.

I initially thought these plans were a great idea, but I'm not sure that they've been as effective as I hoped.

Don't forget the worst gimmick - Krispy Kreme donuts - when we know the vast majority of deaths are in the overweight. These are tricks for monkeys. And a reminder how little they think of you. You know what would have worked? Maybe a little honesty. Maybe treating people as adults and not constantly lying to them, from masks, to virus origin, natural immunity, vaccine risks, and especially treatments. People aren't stupid. I know many who were open to the vaccine once who are digging in to protest now.

The problem is that people think they've been lied to when they largely haven't. They've missed all of the nuance because they're looking for absolutes. Science is nuanced and politics is crude. None of those topics you list are dichotomic in nature, yet our political discussions nevertheless dilute them as such.

I remember in 2020 at the very beginning when people started to panic buy toilet papers, I read something about WHO saying masks should not be recommended to general public to avoid shortage for health professionals. They meant well, but what I saw at the time was a lot of media outlets turning this message into how masks are bad, innefective, and using one in public is the equivalent of wearing a tinfoil hat. This lasted less than a month, but I wonder how much this helped with the "the media is lying to us" sentiment.

The same exact thing later happened with vaccines. They were tested to be effective at significantly reducing the severity of illness and death. Public discourse diluted this to "vaccines prevent covid", and then when people got breakthrough cases, some started claiming they "don't work because you can get it anyway".

My observation is that the political polarization of the topic came before any government action, and is the more primary cause of the issue. Government action (both heavy-handed and otherwise) sparks backlash because of the political polarization.

Honestly I saw it the other way around, when it was first came out the future was uncertain, and there was a lot of confusion the only data we had was untrusted reports from China, I saw a lot of people band together, people looking out for on another general expressions of concern.

There were politics involved but it was relatively mild, and ignored by many people it was about two or three months in when much of the news around COVID changed to being news about how Trump was doing what about the virus, and congress what congress was saying about responses to the virus and the usual schlop I noticed things started to get polarized at the same time the estimates were being adjusted from 1-9% fatality rates to 0.3% fatality rates.

I feel like I am taking crazy pills the way that many on HN constantly seem to imply that the polarization and politicization of the pandemic was caused by the media, scientists, public health officials or anyone else but the last president and many people in his administration. They were immediately trying to shift blame to anyone but themselves. It was the "China virus" from pretty much day 1. He was literally crossing out "Corona" in his speeches and writing in "Chinese"[1] in mid-March. Or do you remember Trumps "I'd love to have it open by Easter" less than a month after the first lockdowns started? It didn't take "two or three months" for it to be politicized as a reactionary measure against Trump. Trump's first reaction was to politicize the situation.

[1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/20/three-pha...

I feel like I am taking crazy pills the way that many think Trump was the source of the polarization and not a reaction to it.

Are you talking about in general or in relation to the pandemic?

In general it was both. Trump was both a reaction to polarization and helped increase it.

With the pandemic, I don't think there was an polarization beforehand. The US usually rallies around even unpopular leaders during trouble. 9/11 is the obvious example. Who specifically do you think caused the pandemic polarization?

> Who specifically do you think caused the pandemic polarization?

The progressive left saw it as a strategy to attack an opposing party president in an election year. The pandemic was their only real hope of election success. Their candidate field was weak. The economy was strong leading up to 2020. The president was polarizing, but was immensely strong among his base and had cross over appeal to the blue collar middle class and increasing support of other demographics that usually vote Democrat.

I think there is no doubt in my mind that no pandemic Trump would have easily won a second term. You can argue that the pandemic polarization strategy was successful in that Trump lost, but there was a cost. Also considering the significant lack of success that the Biden administration has had managing the pandemic, too, I am of the opinion that the cost of the increased public polarization may not be worth it.

Yes, maybe you are taking crazy pills.

It is interesting you say that because the first notice I saw of it starting to get politicized was people calling Trump racist for attempting to placing a travel ban from/to China, and for using the phrase China virus, when there is a decent history of naming diseases from where they came from. I think in fact your link attests to that because it's not saying anything about COVID it is all about how Trump is being racist for using the word China flu. Personally I can't stand the guy, but if you believe that the entire virus and COVID response was made entirely politicized by Donald Trump, I'd check your medication because you might just be taking crazy pills in that case as you stated at the beginning.

>It is interesting you say that because the first notice I saw of it starting to get politicized was people calling Trump racist for attempting to placing a travel ban from/to China,

Trump has a history of xenophobia. The China ban was viewed as a second Muslim ban. It also appeared to be disconnected from the facts at the time because it was neither a full ban and was only singling out China. So it was clearly going to be ineffective and unfairly stigmatize Chinese people. Considering all of this, it isn't surprising his critics called it racist.

Also now that we are still in a pandemic two years later, it should be obvious that Trump patting himself on the back for this China ban is at best foolish. It was never going to have much of an impact.

> and for using the phrase China virus, when there is a decent history of naming diseases from where they came from.

Just because there is a "decent history" of something happening doesn't mean we should continue it forever. It is known that this type of naming is often wrong (the Spanish Flu likely originated in Kansas) and can lead to unnecessary and unproductive stigmatization. There is already a history of intentionally not using the place of origin to avoid these problems (Ebola was consciousness not named after the village it was found so they used a more generalized area)

> I think in fact your link attests to that because it's not saying anything about COVID it is all about how Trump is being racist for using the word China flu.

Why do you think Trump would consistently use "China flu" other than for political reasons? Isn't it obvious so people blame China for it?

>Personally I can't stand the guy, but if you believe that the entire virus and COVID response was made entirely politicized by Donald Trump, I'd check your medication because you might just be taking crazy pills in that case as you stated at the beginning.

I didn't say he was the only person responsible. I said he was the one who initially politicized it. Once it is politicized, both sides will continue to perpetuate that polarization.

>The China ban was viewed as a second Muslim ban.

...which was also misrepresented in the media. They literally used the same countries the Obama Administration had put on their list with the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act of 2015.[1]

Also, the majority of countries on the list weren't Muslim, and the majority of Muslim countries weren't on the list.

[1] https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2017/01/29/news-bull...

The list of countries was less important the the universal nature of the Muslim ban. It was kind of the opposite of the China ban. When it comes to disease, we need to act decisively and universally with care not create loopholes that allow people to pass through. When we are talking about terrorism, banning an entire country doesn't make sense. There has to be some type of vetting for exceptions.

The Muslim ban included people who had already been living in the US for years. These are people who have lives, families, and jobs here. But if they happened to be outside the US when the ban went into effect, they couldn't reenter the country. If they already were in the country, they couldn't leave. They couldn't have their friends or family from back home visit them. There is no logic to a ban of that scale when it comes to preventing terrorism. That is the type of universal ban one creates to stop a pathogen. Except the China ban was full of holes and thousands of Chinese nationals continued to travel to the US. That isn't a plan based on science.

The motivations for both these moves was not rationale. Considering they both came from the same person, a person who has a long documented history of other bigoted actions, his critics connected them with the shared thread of xenophobia.

>There is no logic to a ban of that scale when it comes to preventing terrorism.

Sure there is, it was specifically related the inability of the countries on their list to demonstrate proper port/airport screening & security. The reason most Muslim countries weren't on the list is because most Muslim countries took security seriously enough. This is also why the non-Muslim countries that were on the list were on there.

Imagine, for a moment, the change in reactions had Trump & company declared a "War on Covid".

We love wars. A vast majority of Americans have historically gotten behind wars. Wars on drugs. Wars on terror.

I dunno how things would have turned out, but it makes me wonder.

I can imagine how every TV comedian would have had a recurring "War against common cold" segment, CNN had a ticker with the current economic damage from lockdowns, ACLU suing against mask mandates in every court and FB/Google/Twitter censoring everyone who dared to doubt that chicken soup does really cure viral infections.

Propaganda works, unfortunately — especially on people who self-identify as smart.

Yes, politics is downstream from culture.

Policy in a representative government tends to come from established interests.

Even if this were true, it's irrelevant. If a government initiates action that sparks a backlash, the government is responsible. If the government didn't also anticipate that backlash, it's incompetent in its duty to its citizenry.

And if it did anticipate it, well that's just worse.

People Don't realize that Quebec is banning unvaccinated people from many stores including big box stores (Walmart etc) [0]. The punitive nature is a side effect of creating this new authoritarianism. If you could have new authoritarianism more effectively without punitive measures, I'm sure that's what we would see.

0. https://youtu.be/PtTqEV5aWWY

I think you hit the nail on it's head. Think about it: some countries where these mandates are/were introduced would describe themselves as liberal democracies. We have all these laws that limit the power of government. Forcibly injecting people with the vaccine is obviously not compatible with anything calling itself "liberal".

The ideological weakness is self evident. We can't go door to door with police to give everyone the jab, so we wishy-washy try to force people with other measures. Who can respect an authority that lies and betrays one of its core principles? How can one respect a government that truly tried to outlaw natural human behavior? Talk about heavy handed.

We had a big issue way before the vaccine mandates thanks to the absurdity of right-wing media and right-wing politicians' conspiracy theories. And subsequent pushing of ineffective treatments. There are still people here in the US who believe that ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, z-packs, and steroids will save them if they get it. And they're unvaccinated.

My friend's sibling just died two months ago. Otherwise healthy and everything. Not old. But in a red county with lots of Fox News watchers, so they'd avoided the vaccine. Sad thing is, the rest of the family finally talked them into getting it and they were scheduled but got Covid the week before. Dead a month later.

> We had a big issue way before the vaccine mandates thanks to the absurdity of right-wing media and right-wing politicians' conspiracy theories

Honestly, I feel like the pandemic politics predated all the right wing conspiracy theories emergence. The democrats/progressive left/resisters decision to make Covid the central issue to oust Trump is the more likely genesis. Very early on (Jan/Feb 2020) everything the Trump administration was doing was met with immediate 180 degree resistance from the progressive left and the left-leaning media. Including things they later supported—Travel bans, social distancing suggestions and yes, even the vaccine too.

Before I get accused of being a conservative or a Trumpie…I’m not and far far from it. But…I am not willing to excuse problematic approaches that have negative downstream unintended consequences even if the initial intention may have been positive.

Blaming the right is akin to being mad when the person you punched in the nose decides to fight back. How dare they!

> Before I get accused of being a conservative or a Trumpie…I’m not and far far from it.

Your comment history betrays you.

No it doesn’t. I am a classic liberal and an independent and my comment history reflects that.

Just because I don’t hold the established dogmatic progressive opinions on every topic doesn’t mean I am conservative or supported Trump. Don’t make politics a religion.

In a quick browse last night there was anti-Fauci rhetoric, comments about Marxism cities in California, incorrect information about mask effectiveness and anti-mask sentiments, climate change denial-ism, Covid misinformation, etc. In relation to what we're talking about here:

> I suspect that if this omicron had emerged in 2018 at least with the symptoms and lack of severe disease that we have seen so far…it would likely have been described as a virulent common cold and may have gotten an occasional news mention, but zero public and government panic.

This is so wholly inaccurate, it's beyond the pale. Our average daily death rate from Omicron has already exceeded Delta. Omicron 'seems' milder overall due to the high level of vaccinations which prevent hospitalization and death and decrease transmission. If Omicron came out first, our overall death rate would be far beyond the 870,000 US deaths we've seen so far. And there would have been far more refrigerated morgue trucks at the hospital down the street from me in the initial wave.

Ahh yes, because I am critical of Fauci, masking, and the politicization of the vaccines…all sacred dogma to the left, I am a conservative trumpie.

This smacks of a “believe exactly what my church believes or you are going to hell you evil sinner” Zealotry at its finest.

As for your comments about the deaths attributed to omicron… post some statistics. Because what you are saying here doesn’t jive with what I am reading AND more importantly doesn’t jive with what a lot of countries are doing in regards to Omicron. Most notably and recently being Denmark.

It's not dogma. You post factually incorrect 'opinions' pushed by the right. You think 'cloth masks are useless', while science disagrees. A decently fitted cloth mask is far more effective then nothing, but not as effective as a surgical mask, which is not as effective as as N95. As for the death rates 'doesn’t jive with what I am reading', what the heck are you reading? Even the Fox News owned Wall Street Journal reported on Omicron deaths exceeding Delta [1]. This isn't some surprise or hidden statistic where reputable sources disagree.

The overall lower deaths and hospitalizations due to Omicron are due to the vaccines. Generally, if you're vaccinated and boostered, your case of Omicron is relatively mild. Though not always, as my sister's Father-in-law found out winding up with afib in the hospital. If you're unvaccinated, you're not so lucky. Currently 2,000-3,000 daily deaths in the last 7 days in the US as per the CDC [2]. And that's with ~64% of the US population fully vaccinated. If this happened in 2018 with none of the population vaccinated, no knowledge of the spread or how to prevent it, etc... it would have been very bad.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/omicron-deaths-in-u-s-exceed-de...

[2] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_totaldeaths

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that someone who seems to think of politics in black and white terms would glob on to a single quote of mine from a couple of weeks ago, quote only half of it completely out of context to the discussion it was in and then use it to make assumptions about the rest of my political leanings.

For what it’s worth here is the quote in its entirety. If you read the parent thread it was speaking to cloth vs N95 efficacy:

“Personally I think cloth masks are worthless for anything but the most casual exposure to the virus, and then for it to maintain any reasonable protective effect, you would need to remove and dispose of the mask as those luckily trapped virus particles can dislodge and infect. Continuing to wear a cloth mask that has accumulated virus particles in it just turns a chance casual exposure into a long term one.”

Now, explain how that opinion is in conflict with this CDC mask guidance which is less than one week old:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...

Here’s the NYT reporting on the change in CDC masking guidance:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/14/health/cloth-masks-covid-...

Here is WebMD making the argument against against cloth masks due to their lack of efficacy:

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20211229/cloth-masks-vs-surg...

Or this lovely gem from the CDC which basically tells me that, because of my choice of facial hair, pretty much all masks short of a space suit are worthless:

https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/pdfs/facialhairwmask11282017...

If you are going to assume my quote about the worthlessness of cloth masks makes me a conservative trumpie, then you better stop listening to the CDC, stop reading the NYT, maybe boycott WebMD for good measure too. Damn right wing organizations, them.

Also not that it matters, but in terms of public figures, my politics are probably closest to Bill Maher. If you think he is conservative or a Trumpie, well…I suspect anyone short of Bernie Sanders or AOC fails your acid test.

Each time you only respond to 1/2 of what I point out. No defense of your climate change comments, conveniently leaving those out of the grandparent reply. No mention here of the fact that you were wrong about Omicron stats and death rates and wouldn't reveal what sources you use that don't 'jive' with the official statistics.

And yes, the NY Times headline "C.D.C. concedes that cloth masks do not protect against the virus as effectively as other masks" is exactly what I just posted above. We know that. We've known that. And I'll post the exact same thing again. A well fitting cloth mask is far better than nothing but less than a surgical mask which is less than an N95. It's not worthless.

Oh my Goodness…You have exposed me. Yes, I am secretly a conservative whose master plan for conservative domination involves voting for zero republicans for the last 4 decades, contributing financially and physically to liberal causes, supporting liberal politicians, railing against intolerant religious bigots for decades, supporting gay marriage and rights years and years before the Democratic Party did, and my public stance against the death penalty while being secretly glad with every criminal that the state executes.

Damn…40 years of undercover work wasted.

Validating seems to be so lackluster that I'm not sure fake card producers are even an issue currently. Any time I've had to validate my vax status in order to get into some establishment, either a crappy photocopy or a digital photo of the card on my phone has been accepted without even blinking. Typically they don't even look at the info, they just see you wave something that looks vaguely right at them and they're satisfied.

Yea, this is a problem, too. Know why liquor stores [generally] scrutinize IDs carefully when someone who looks young tries to buy alcohol? Because there are actually legal consequences to them for getting it wrong that governments love to enforce.

Yep, you are right. I actually used to own a liquor store. Shutting you down for a day or more while you pay for your employees to go to mandatory retraining hits the pocket book pretty hard. Of course you could (well, had to, really) also just pay into the local police 'benevolent society'. It was cheaper and kept you out of most trouble.

Somehow, inexplicably, some of our governments believed it a good idea to delegate underpaid, overworked individuals at private companies to the role of vaccine police. At best, its virtue signal posturing; ineffectual. The far scarier take: a power like this should principally and traditionally lie with the police, but legislating it so would have the optics of being authoritarian, thus our governments delegate the power to private corporations, further entrenching the cyberpunk corpocapitalistic power dynamic of the real governance of the United States. Such a move (nearly) flies by, even lauded by some, because the population at large still doesn't recognize or respect how much fucking power corporations have in this country.

Is it really a public health nightmare? What data is there to show that vaccine passports are effective at reducing spread or hospitalizations?

What data is there to show that vaccines reduce the spread? Hospitalization, yes. Spread? Not anymore!

Unpopular observation: if an ebola-deadly, vaccine-effective variant comes along, it would hopefully wipe out enough of those who are too dumb to take care of themselves or impetuously refuse vaccines. Modern life and medicine is too safe to select for common sense or intelligence.

Have you even considered that this is what many people who have not taken the vaccine are waiting for? They are going to go get the vaccine when this deadly strains comes out.

It is no secret MRNA vaccines do not last. It was known before COVID and no miraculous break through occurred that fixed this this issue they have. Previous MRNA vaccines applicants also showed you cannot just keep reinjecting yourself every x months. It causes a whole host of problem including weakening your immune system (EU recently rewarned about this for the Covid one).

So its seems the people not vaccinated will have an option to actually get protected, not so much for those that have taken it already though.

> Previous MRNA [sic] vaccines applicants also showed you cannot just keep reinjecting yourself every x months.

> So its seems the people not vaccinated will have an option to actually get protected, not so much for those that have taken it already though.

This is utter hogwash horseshit. Let me guess. You watch InfoWars, OAN, and Fox News. You need some better "alternative facts" that include how long vaccines take to generate neutralizing antibodies and how long they last.

* Instead, countries should leave more time between booster programs and tie them to the onset of the cold season in each hemisphere, following the blueprint set out by influenza vaccination strategies, the agency said.*

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-11/repeat-bo...

Maybe when you learn to read and quote things fairly, you won't look like such a dummy.

Glad you have to resort to person attacks and then quote an article backing up my point you can't constantly be giving boosters out.

I never said there wasn't a good strategy but rather than doing it x month was bad which in fact it is. You however had to make something up so you can launch your personal attack.

Please review the guidelines and rules before you type more utter hogwash horseshit https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Contribute value or leave. Have a nice day.

Isn't that a common knowledge, assuming vaccination means less hospitalization. So, why do we even need data in such case?

Vaccine passports somehow forces or incentivizes people to vaccinate more?

No. Requiring vaccine passports or vaccine cards incentivizes people to get vaccine passports and/or vaccine cards, which is exactly what we're seeing.

This is like counting lines of code or repo commits to see how productive a SWE is. If you want to incentivize X, you have to be very careful not to instead incentivize an imperfect proxy for X.

Same with the tests.

All it says is that the test said positive or negative. It in no way tells you anything about how bad your Covid is, how far along it is, and if you can spread it to others.

The tests are a last minute cash grab.

Stop getting tested and this thing ends. (However I know a bunch of folks who have to be tested anyway because they didn’t want to be boosted, despite getting the initial vax)

Absurd. "Stop going to the hospital and this thing ends" is on the same level. Cash flow has nothing to do with virus spread. It's interesting to consider misaligned incentives but you are alleging something much more serious without giving any credence to the actual purpose of testing.

>Cash flow has nothing to do with virus spread.

Not wrong, however cash flow does have something to do with hospitalizations and covid death counts. Hospitals get subsidized for admitted covid patients and for covid deaths.

We see the same misunderstanding in implemented taxes. Ever notice the ebb and flow of "that new alcoholic beverage" that seems to be popular for a time and then disappear? There were seltzers and wine coolers, etc. Each disappeared as soon as a tax was levied specifically against that beverage.

Likewise, Tennessee laws crushed a single kind of tow truck (called a "wrecker", I think) when they targeted a specific configuration of truck. What you see now is mostly tilt-bed tow trucks because the other kind of truck is more expensive to operate.

Money/access incentivizes people to change their habits. We are creatures that seek a minimal energy expenditure solution. If going to some website and filling in a pdf that generates an "ok" looking picture is required to retain access to a bar, people will do that.

What realistic alternative do you propose? I don't think injecting everyone with a microdose of Covid before entering and then measuring the immune response scales very well, nor can be performed by regular bouncers/doormen/wait staff.

Yeah, and the easiest way, by far, to get a vaccine passport/card is to get vaccinated...

Besides, people don't like to lie if they can avoid it. Being honest and getting a vaccine card by getting a vaccine is what most people will do.

If it's 10-12% such as the YouGov poll suggests, that feels in line with "Who are the assholes in our society?" Most people aren't like that.

The problem is the cards lack security features and an electronic verification mechanism. They should've thought about fakes before rolling them out.

And now you know what this article is a pretext for.

It is a common and well documented knowledge that obesity and alcohol use increase hospitalizations. Do you propose fitness and sobriety passports to incentivize healthier life styles?

If obese and alcohol user starts to fill up hospitals, spread diseases to other, causes trouble to other people, is recommended by public health officials I would say Yes. And I think obesity, alcohol are too different than current corona virus.

They are not different. I can assure you that we don't run many 911 calls on gym rats, runners, cyclists and hikers... unless they have injured themselves doing said activities. Drunk idiots and Obese people are the overwhelming majority of our calls.

Denying healthcare to those who don't take of themselves is a necessary evil to avoid the burden of freedumbs.

The obese also experience disproportionately more classic hits including diabetes, amputations, falls, strokes, heart attacks, and cancers.

Speaking of drunk idiots: from my vantage, I regularly see more than one rider piled on a Lime scooter in the middle of the street in nightclub traffic. Organ donors? Nawh. I think they're too selfish and stupid to opt-in. But big mommy and big daddy consequence-free, unlimited care will spare no expense to patch them back together (i.e., craniofacial trauma, TBI, ortho) if they hit a rock, pothole, curb, bump, or get run over.

Denying healthcare to people who need immediate emergency care is immoral -- so much so that it's one of the few things that even US law forces hospitals to do.

I think it is significantly more of a moral issue to punish people by letting them die in the street than it is a moral problem to require adherence to public health standards to eat in a restaurant.

Applied to any other public health concern, this suggestion would be silly. Should we deny people treatment for food poisoning if they want the freedom to break food-safety rules at a restaurant? Should we deny treatment to a traffic accident victim if they were speeding?

In parts of Canada, there is prohibition due to epidemic alcoholism. It doesn't solve it, but maybe it helps at the expense of increasing criminal activity.

Not just numbers, but numbers we can trust.

I've been really impressed with how much data my province (Alberta) has made available, but now, I'm wondering.

They recently had "technical difficulties", and the numbers changed from showing that double-vaxxed people were the most at-risk for omicron, to showing that unvaxxed people are. https://twitter.com/AB_CovidFacts/status/1486112498977685506

Also disturbing is that, if you get vaccinated and have issues within the first 14 days, they count you as being unvaccinated in all the reports: https://metatron.substack.com/p/alberta-just-inadvertently-c...

Is there a reasonable explanation for the revised numbers without delving into conspiracies?

>Is there a reasonable explanation for the revised numbers without delving into conspiracies?

Why are you assuming these are mutually exclusive? Governments are famous for nothing if not conspiring.

I for one really enjoy the vaccine mandate in NYC. I feel much more comfortable knowing that if I catch it going out (seems likely), I'll be unlikely to spread it to anyone unvaccinated causing serious disease.

Of course I'm also boosted and got my flu shot (and do it every year), so I'm probably already more conscientious living in NYC than many.

If someone uses a fake to get in... well... there's only so much I can do, but I discourage it for their own health and for the health of others around them. I flat out told my friend who did the same as such.

I'm sure he'd get through it, but why get mega sick instead of getting the vaccine at this point?

So someone else’s freedoms should be limited so you can feel “comfortable”?

Lol, yes.

If people want to eat at restaurants unvaccinated in NYC they have a variety of options. They can eat outside in the stalls which often have heat and shields against the wind. They can order at home and eat with their friends who want to take that risk.

Going to a concert so you can more likely catch and spread a highly infectious virus and become more sick and hospitalized isn't some constitutional right.

And the value of not having people who'll willingly "limit someone else's freedoms" by spreading a virus they could be vaccinated against, well, at the end of the day, I'd rather "limit their freedoms" to use your term, then the person who didn't need to catch it anyways and is now sick or hospitalized. That sounds a lot more like "limited freedoms" than "Oh no, I can't see a play".

What about attending political protests?

Why not allow businesses (and concerts and plays and etc.) to decide if they want to allow unvaccinated customers (or not)? That's their business. If you don't want to visit businesses (and concerts and plays and etc.) that allow unvaccinated customers then don't go to those businesses (and concerts and plays and etc.). That's your business.

Uhh yes? Rights conflict with rights all the time, we've already agreed that we have foregone certain rights in certain scenarios ("strict scrutiny") for the safety and welfare of the whole.

You have to wear pants, you can't drive at night without headlights, you can't sit in a restaurant yelling F*K at the top of your lungs in between bites, you have to get a permit to hold a music festival on the street, you can't post political signs on my property ...

Man is born free and eveywhere in chains, literally this is a solved problem from 260 years ago.

Except your feeling of safety is leading you to be more likely to get it, and when you get it you are very likely to spread it. So a vaccine passport for a leaky vaccine like this one, likely does more harm than good.

This is why everyone reading this can attest to the fact that they know more people infected in the last 2 months (most of whom were vaccinated) than the entire rest of the pandemic.

>If someone uses a fake to get in... well... there's only so much I can do, but I discourage it for their own health and for the health of others around them.

I think you're conflating getting a vaccine card with getting the vaccine.

You should not really care about people who aren't vaccinated by choice. They have made their own decision and are ready to take the risk. And I'm all for giving them the opportunity.

I am amazed that anyone would spend hundreds of dollars to get replica of a handwritten paper card with zero security features of which there are millions of originals floating around.

I guess the people who don't really understand how vaccines work also overlap with with people who don't understand how paper cards with no security features work.

Some people perhaps don't have the skills to replicate the different handwriting, stamps, reasonable dates/locations, etc, that would be needed to make them plausible for a specific area. Even if they aren't technically security features, they sort of are.

It's not even the vaccine part of a vaccine card that bothers me the most. I just don't want to expand the "papers, please" part of living in a society. Every little thing shouldn't need verification.

I highly disagree with this. In fact, I think the best thing for the world is more fake ids. So we can search for true vectors of disease, such as MRNA gene therapies that are not fully tested.

Passports are just a means to move to a social credit score. Which is horrifying in its implications.

Can't we both research vectors and have vaccine cards? And surely you're exaggerating by the use of the word "just". Maybe there is some circle I have not interacted with where a vaccine card is a weird social status thing, but they are also literally vaccine cards. Medical records conveying actionable information, in addition to whatever else, however inherently imperfect at that job.

You misinterpret "social credit score". GP means a Chinese-esque implementation of government tracking that shows whether you are a "quality citizen" or not.

This will obviously happen when there is no enforcement against it. If the last two years showed us anything it’s that the federal and state governments are all talk when it comes to COVID and can’t be bothered to enforce any of their so-called mandates.

You know what would help fight these forgeries? Visible consequences for producing and possessing them.

How would you propose we start doing that?

Well we kind of can’t, now, since the design of the existing ones are so easily faked. If we could do them over again:

1. Go back in time and use one or more anti-forgery features of drivers licenses to at least make them hard to forge

2. Hold retailers accountable who fail to check or accept a forgery (like we do for liquor stores checking ID)

3. Consequences for possession of forged documents

4. Find and go after producers of them. This can’t be hard—the police could probably find quite a few just with a web search.

That’s because the vaccine cards were never designed to authenticate vaccine status. It was literally an appointment reminder mechanism. In fact, a PDF of the blank card was available from the CDC website.

Who could have guessed a piece of cardstock would be a poor means of verification. No one seems to have thought these through and few seem to be taking it seriously.

My nana lived a long and good life. When I was a little boy, I discovered that she's actually one year older than her official documents suggest. She revealed that it was not done by a mistake or a typo, but by a deliberate action. The story was that in the early 1940s the village she was living in was under German occupation and young people were being conscripted into "labor camps" and transferred to Reich mainland. So her family pulled all the strings, bribed all right people to make a "correction" to the documents in a way indistinguishable from original record. The war was over in a few years, but nobody bothered to "fix" the fake record.

By the way, German administration at the time wanted to be seen as "liberators from communist oppression". The conscription was promoted as highly noble thing, beneficial for the "New Order". Those joining "labor camps" were celebrated. There were bounties set for dobbing in partisans ("bandits"). Although collaborators were many, nonetheless many others, lacking the necessary connections to obtain fake ausweiss, chose to fight the "liberators" with all the rage they could muster. Many paid the ultimate price. If my grandma's document forgery was revealed, the whole family would be in line for execution. By no means it was an "easier" option than conscription, but certainly "easier" than fully joining "people's avengers".

I believe when the matter is perceived as life-and-death, the lack of "easier" option to take out a fake document may very well push some people into full-blood fight. You don't need many of them before society falls into a bloody war. So, the prevalence of fake vaccine certificates may be not a problem, but a blessing in disguise. If one is willing to consider a possible alternative.

The US government's inability to deploy effective mobile validation apps like China is a feature, not a bug. A "legit" handwritten card signed by someone at Walgreens is inherently untrustworthy.

Legit cards are not "signed" by anyone. They're simply vaccination records for the patient. The patient derives their trust in the card from the fact that they were present at their own vaccination.

>They're simply vaccination records for the patient.

Yes, exactly. And "signed" was not the best term. "Filled out" would be better.

Good. No one verifies this crap anyway. Even in Israel where it's a digitally signed government issued token, nobody has actually ever verified it (that I've seen). Only at the airport, maybe.

If one of the goals of the vaccine passport is to partition the vaccinated from the unvaccinated (i.e i don't want to put my patrons at risk by allowing someone sick to enter my shop) then I suspect fraud is at the bottom of a long list of other more important issues that undermine said goal.

In order for vaccine passports to be effective, they need to be full-scale, uniform, and zero-tolerance. For ex. Australia does this high effect.

But in the U.S. every state, business, and household has a different set of rules and they've been making it up as they go. This has resulted in numerous non-fraud scenarios where the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups mingle, and supposedly exchange the virus. Ex. Grocery stores, schools, holiday dinners and parties

Our approach has been so federated that I can't imagine any meaningful improvements can be attributed to the passports. Inversely I can't imagine any real negative effects can be attributed to fraud.

The worst part of this is that if you end up with a fake card, you're clearly against the idea of it, but not enough to take a stand against it.

Best form of civil disobedience for these authoritarian and I would argue unlawful government mandates.

The "public health nightmare" is that such a thing is so easily faked, on top of the fact that no one looks anyway. Has anyone ever seen a QR code being scanned? No? Just wave a screenshot of your friend's digital vaccination record? Yeah, that works. Why even bother with fake cardboard representations? Post that screenshot (with the QR code replaced by a rickroll URL) to your Telegram channel, sorted.

But just now with the pearl-clutching? Because when they handed me my card almost a year ago, I almost didn't hang on to it because my first thought was, "well, no one is going to accept that as proof of vaccination. I could have photocopied it for all anyone knows." Turns out...

In Switzerland and Italy I've had mine scanned pretty much everywhere I went. So I wouldn't generalize.

US-centric POV because US-centric article, from the sub-headline: "Thousands of fake vaccine card vendors threaten to gut the effectiveness of U.S. vaccine mandates"

> Has anyone ever seen a QR code being scanned? No? Just wave a screenshot of your friend's digital vaccination record? Yeah, that works.

Sometimes. In my experience, it's just as likely your photo ID will be scrutinized and compared with the QR code. Which in your scenario does not work. The problem is there are rarely repercussions for the individual that presents the bogus documentation, or the entity that accepts them.

Why did this drop of the front page? I'm not familiar with how the HN algorithm works. I would guess some combination of recency and activity.

As long as there's some mechanism to identify the fraudulent cards people can be held accountable for trying to pass off a fake as the real thing. Making, selling, or using a fake vaccination card is a felony.

Can just anybody call up say, Walmart and verify if a vaccination card supposedly filled out by them is authentic? If not then that's the issue. Not the fact that fakes exist.

Yes, let's just make everyone's private medical info even less private! That's the ticket!

I don't understand why the US must invent new solutions, when there are already working solutions in other countries of the world. Yes, with a digitally signed QR code and an ID, where the controller checks the signature and the ID and that's it, no medical info goes anywhere. Even the US has ID checks when buying alcohol, why it's so difficult to use for covid? And yeah some people show fake IDs too, but how many are those. And yeah some people will show with "lying" QRs but only the health authorities can issue those so you know already where you must look for the forgers.

What "new solutions" has the US invented? The cards were never meant to serve as proof of vaccination. That's the bottom line.

What is preventing the US from putting a QR in those cards as many other countries?

The cards were never meant to act as authentication. They're literally just for the patient's personal use.

The qr code idea in Europe works together with your id. Americans don't want to use ID even for voting, hard to expect to have working vaccination card program. Hence they're left with random papers and the problem on hand.

> Americans don't want to use ID even for voting

*many liberal Americans

That's funny, considering the concept of a national ID has been soundly rejected by republicans for decades. Instead we shoehorned SSN's into that position.

He said:

> Americans don't want to use ID even for voting

You said:

> a national ID

Most Republicans do not favor national ID's and do favor checking ID's to vote. The idea behind voter ID is using the same state ID you use to buy liquor, etc.

Pretty sure the US doesn't have an official federal-issued ID, and most of the time driving license works as such. And it seems this applies to the majority of Anglosphere countries.

Here in Poland we have a compulsory IDs, which for over 20 years now are plastic. Recently RFID tags and finger prints were added; there's also a standard biometric photo of face. All of this comes also with electronic and qualified electronic signature which can be used to verify our identity in government services or to sign the digital documents. And yes, we need to have it or the slowly accepted digital version when we want to vote in any elections.

You wouldn't need a federal-issued ID. You can use the state id which you also use to identify yourself for everything else. National ID "requirement" is a fake obstacle. Identification verification is already a requirement as well - you must give your name and attest that you are who you say you are. Lying about it is a crime. An ID would not add an additional requirement, it would just enable better enforcement.

Besides, with "Real ID" state ID's meet federal verification standards now as well.

Having a federal ID might make sense if you're voting in federal elections, but there are no direct federal elections in the US. People in the US vote in state elections, and the states then vote in the electoral college.

A passport is probably the most common ID issued by a federal government entity (Department of State) in the US.

A military ID is a also federal document (Department of Defense) but that only applies to a certain subset of the population.

QR code can be spoofed and that happened already - there were certificates issued for e.g. Adolf Hitler and also for Mickey Mouse with govt health agency signature [1]; these were using French and German keys. Both are invalidated of course. And not mention all "classic" written physical information cards - these are around too for people who want to avoid vaccines for whatever reasons they want.

[1] - https://niebezpiecznik.pl/post/falszowanie-certyfikat-covid-... (in Polish)

On a paper this looks great - hell, the solution might even work for a time but additional unexpected factors may spawn out of nowhere and destroy whole thing.

Aren't the cards cryptographically signed as the EU ones?

A better headline: "Fake vaccines are everywhere"

This article presents largely circumstantial evidence. But it’s true, many people will get fake vaccine cards because they believe in bodily autonomy.

Good. People have a right to be free.

But not free to host a vaccinated space, I guess.

Well depends what you call free. If we can end pandemic, we don't have to wear masks, no more boosters. That would be ideal freedom right?

But not vaccinating, thinking one can outsmart public health officials, being intolerant is apparently not a freedom to me.

And, after some countries are now on their 4th boosters (Edit: shot, not booster), and my country being about halfway done with their third round, are we slowly stamping out the virus?

Personally I feel lied to and misled, the messaging from the government where I am from was far from what one would call nuanced and informed. The short story is that they promised: "If you take your shots, then we'll get out of this mess". Even now, a propaganda ad that states: "We don't want you to take a booster to make things impossible, we want you to take your booster to make things possible again". Even though it's abundantly clear that people are getting reinfected and spreading Omicron, booster or no booster.

From my perspective we're kidding ourselves that we can get a handle on this disease without permanently going in and out of lockdowns. In my county we stamped out the virus at least twice before (stamped out going to < 20 cases per day, some cities without for months). And then it comes back. Well I'm done locking down, and I think this is a consistent, fair standpoint to take. I don't want to have to identify myself and my status to enter the store or public life. People get sick, people die, everyone will get omicron, or something similar, eventually.

What countries are on their 4th boosters?

Sorry, 4th shot, not booster. Israel.

But the vaccinations are working to get everyone out of the mess. While Omicron is not prevented entirely by the vaccines, hospitalizations per confirmed case are an order of magnitude lower than previous waves, and deaths are similarly an order of magnitude lower. This was the trend with Delta before Omicron as well.

Highly vaccinated countries are now at the point where any of the current variants are now only a little more dangerous than seasonal flu, which we live with almost every year. As such, barring a more dangerous variant arising, there is no point to further lockdowns. It's endemic, it's not going away entirely, but we can now live with it.

The most important thing we can do now is get the rest of the world into a highly vaccinated state, which will help suppress further variants emerging so quickly.

Freedom is self-determination and ownership of your own survival.

Some people will make decisions you see as stupid or bad. Upside: others can't impose their decisions on you. Downside: you can't impose your decisions on others.

Philosophical & Cynical View: What I have learned in this world is if you have enough money you can fake 99% thing.

The only problem is faking efficiently.

Does it feel like it was pretty deliberate that these vaccine cards were designed in such a way as to be relatively easy to fake - or at the very lease, not designed to be hard to copy. I'm always impressed when I go to Mexico about the quality of the immigration card with the embossed/hologram like headers, that you get. If vaccine cards had looked like that it would have reduced counterfeits significantly. I'm 100% in on vaccine mandates, and mask mandates, and (hyper-local) lockdowns when appropriate - but I'm also really glad the United States didn't go all big brother on Government Tracking/Documentation on this stuff.

They weren't designed to be an authentication measure in the first place any more than the little reminder card your doctor's office gives you when you schedule your next appointment.

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