Are you ready for this? It’s a good bet you’ll need a COVID-19 immunity “passport” to travel internationally in the near future — and you may even need it to fly domestically if the airlines get their way.
But might you also need it to attend community events or frequent your favorite pub or restaurant? It’s a startling, vexing question being raised in media reports and in debates around the globe in health and civil liberties circles — even as North Kansas City-based Cerner and other health care technology companies work to create what are known as “vaccine credentials.”
And, oh by the way, it’s a question with no good answers.
“I think that would take a lot of real careful thought and scrutiny before we would go there,” said Kansas City Health Director Dr. Rex Archer.
That says a lot, given that Archer is a huge and longtime proponent of requiring immunization histories on travel passports — which he says could prevent outbreaks of measles, tuberculosis and other diseases largely eradicated in the U.S.
In terms of international travel Archer, like a growing number of countries, sees the value of requiring proof of COVID-19 immunity.
“You can get anywhere in this world now in 24 hours. So, globally, our real risk isn’t military attacks. Our risk is mother nature and natural outbreaks,” he said. “And we’re not learning our lessons from this coronavirus to prepare. I think that passport vaccination issue would be an important strategy in protecting us.”
Ethical questions surround access to vaccines
But requiring a COVID-19 vaccine passport domestically or even locally is a horse of a different color, according to Archer: “There are a lot of ethical concerns that have to be thought through. Almost any rule or law or regulation that we pass, if it is not implemented appropriately, can be unjust or unfair or target certain vulnerable populations.”
How vulnerable populations are treated in the vaccination process — and what the process means for someone’s freedom to move about the community and country — is of great concern as well to University of Kansas Medical Center ethicist Dr. Tarris Rosell, also of the nonprofit Center for Practical Bioethics.
Rosell said a proof-of-immunity requirement could be a “scarlet letter in reverse,” if those without the proof are shunned. And he said vulnerable populations, especially minority populations, might be disproportionately affected, since vaccinations in those communities are lagging those of white Americans. If we open up travel and commerce only to those who’ve been vaccinated, what about those who are unable to access the vaccines?
Rosell also noted an October article in the U.K.-based medical journal the Lancet that says, in part, “Some have argued that immunity passports are unethical and impractical, pointing to uncertainties relating to COVID-19 immunity, issues with testing, perverse incentives, doubtful economic benefits, privacy concerns, and the risk of discriminatory effects.”
The article also warns that “permitting immune individuals to exercise more freedoms than those who are not immune would undermine the message that we are ‘all in this together.’”
Restaurants, schools, airplanes need people in seats
Still, Rosell said, it’s only right and fair to let immunized residents go about their lives — which is what businesses desperately need.
