From identification cards to driver’s licenses to visas and travel permits, it is evident that the natural flow and security of our social order is heavily dependent upon various forms of individual verification. At their core, the aforementioned forms of verification are nominal placeholders set to reinforce and uphold the social constructs of identity, government, institutions, and politics in which our society is built upon. Vaccine passports are no different. This essay will explore the four vaccine passport articles by putting their various viewpoints in conversation with one another to ultimately assert that vaccine passports are a natural and inevitable progression to facilitating the change necessary in returning to pre-Covid19 normalcy and ensuring the rebuilding of a safe lifestyle for the greater good.
In the reading entitled, Vaccine Passports Are a Terrible Idea, Michael Dougherty vehemently argues in opposition of vaccine passports, claiming they will cause “a massive disruption to normal life,” and “require an enormous infrastructure accompanied by a change of political culture,” all effects that he believes are completely unnecessary. Through the examples of Cuomo’s announcement of a vaccine passport plan, Europe’s continued discussion on the matter, the NBA’s lenient requirement for its players, and references to the potential worsening of already polarizing inequality statistics, the article’s main objective is to assert that vaccine passports are not the answer, and could even worsen and/or inhibit successful strides and efforts back to normalcy. In contrast, the article entitled, “Covid passports - What Are Different Countries Planning” takes a more exploratory approach in addressing how countries like Europe, Israel, Greece, and Estonia are planning to implement vaccine passports. While Dougherty claims that “health passports are unnecessary because normal life is slowly returning to the United States and the United Kingdom well before vaccine passports are needed to facilitate it,” this reading contrarily highlights Europe’s swift action and growing interest in adopting a Digital Green Certificate by the summer in order to “get travel moving across borders.” This proves that while Dougherty believes that vaccine passport implementation is independent of returning to normal life, the leaders of Europe and non EU countries see vaccine passports as essential to creating and sustaining a successful post-Covid world.
In “Key Questions About COVID-19 Vaccine Passports in the U.S.,” The Kaiser Family Foundation addresses some of the most popular and pressing questions regarding the nature of vaccine passports specific to America. While it is clear that domestically, vaccine passports are likely to be used for access to federal facilities, the article emphasizes the Biden administration’s explicit stance on not delegating the “role of issuing vaccine passports or collecting and storing individuals’ vaccination data” to the federal government. Similar to the evidence that Michael Dougherty uses to defend his position against vaccine passports, this article concludes with a delineation of multiple vaccine passport implementation issues worth considering, including: equity challenges in vaccine roll out specific to Black, Brown, and non-citizen immigrant communities, the insurance that these passports will be internationally recognized for travel purposes, and the concern over what this means for privacy and data protection. Both Dougherty and The Kaiser Family Foundation acknowledge that vaccine passports will only exacerbate the already egregious disparities among minority populations. However, the two articles diverge on their views on vaccine passport necessity. Unlike the narrative in “Vaccine Passports Are a Terrible Idea,” The Kaiser Family Foundation article acknowledges that there will be substantial barriers to implementation to consider, however vaccine passports are the natural next step “to balance public health concerns while also easing a return to some level of normalcy.”
In solidifying my argument that vaccine passports are a necessary part of achieving a semblance of normalcy in a post-Covid19 world, we must first revisit the precept that is the cornerstone of this course: the only thing constant is change. While years ago the idea of a vaccine passport would have sounded absurd, we are now entering an era where an overwhelming amount of people and institutions view them as necessary and intuitive. The technologies we use, the way the market works, the way we govern ourselves, all the things we hold as true today, we will not necessarily hold as true tomorrow. With that said, this change does not come with the promise of no new barriers, concerns, or threats to human life, but actually the opposite. Though Dougherty uses the requirement of an “enormous infrastructure, and a change of political culture” as a weapon against vaccine passport implementation, I would argue that this is actually a catalyst to further support the need for them. While Dougherty describes these changes as a negative component, based on the constant nature of change itself, I believe that these aforementioned changes are necessary and inevitable with or without the introduction of vaccine passports. There will always be a call to rebuild infrastructure or to revitalize our political structure no matter the time nor the subject at hand. To negate the need for vaccine passports on account that it will be disruptive not only goes against the topic of this course, but is a fundamentally fallacious argument in and of itself. For instance, in “The Road to Serfdom” Danielle Allen addresses the impact of change in the 1970’s when “one era gave way to another.” She writes that “the ’70s brought major shifts in the social, political, and economic domains and that in 2019, we sit on the far side of that transformation.” She uses examples like the civil rights movement, the widespread use of the pill, and the legalization of abortion to further emphasize her point. These social changes in the 70’s all shifted the world and culture as it was previously understood, similar to how Covid-19 has impacted contemporary society. Allen proves that change, though disruptive and impactful by nature, is not only inevitable, it is natural and necessary to the progression of society.
In continuing the conversation of society’s innate susceptibility to change, it is important to note that governmental institutions will always play a substantial role in driving society in one direction or the other. The article,“Can States Jail People Who Do Not Get Vaccinated,” explores the limitations, or lack thereof, of state authority in regards to those who refuse to get vaccinated. The article confirms that “states can compel vaccinations in more or less intrusive ways,” and that the act of limiting access to schools, services, or jobs is one that has the support of the Supreme Court. Through the retelling of several landmark cases mostly in support of states’ rights and authority to mandate vaccinations, as well as detailing the history that links racism to vaccinations, the article's main objective is to showcase the degree of controversiality of compulsory vaccinations in the United States. Similar to the previous readings, this article makes a direct link to racial disparities in regard to vaccine access and distribution. Therefore, the one common thread throughout all of the articles in how they address vaccinations and vaccination passports is their historical and contemporary linkage to racial inequity.
A counter argument to the necessity of vaccine passports is posed in the reading, “Vaccine Passports Are a Terrible Idea.” Dougherty writes that “vaccine passports for COVID-19 would be a massive disruption to normal life and would introduce a complete anomaly into the West — the need to show one’s papers, papers containing intimate information — to gain access to what we’ve heretofore thought of as public accommodations.” I would argue that one of the main lessons that Covid-19 has taught countries, governments, and people groups alike, is the importance of social capital. When the world shut down and people were forced to retreat to their own corners, we saw how chaotic society can become in the absence of the ebb and flow of people and their networks. It is not a hyperbolic statement to say that society is nothing without the people who contribute to it. This concept is further solidified in a quote by Robert Putnam. It reads, “the central premise of social capital is that social networks have value. Social capital refers to the collective value of all “social networks” [who people know] and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other [“norms of reciprocity”] (Community, Putnam).” It is this reciprocity that requires an individual sacrifice for the greater good, keeping the world afloat. I disagree with Dougherty’s assessment that the requirement of papers to gain access to public accommodations is a signifier of “massive disruption.” Instead, it is evident that this is the practice of the “norm of reciprocity” that Putnam suggests. The sacrifice of a minor individual inconvenience for the sake of greater public health is the foundation of social capital and thus social network. It is the perpetual practice of this concept that will smoothly transition us into the change and the new normal that Covid-19 has guided us into.
Ultimately, the socially constructed concepts that make up identity and institutions and shape how we practice globalization through storytelling and lived experiences, further guiding how we define and redefine culture and social networks, are all built upon one remaining notion: change. Our quest to adapt to the change catalyzed by Covid19 has introduced the topic of vaccine passports into the conversation of what our new normal will look like. Similar to any other historical shift in beliefs and practices, vaccine passports are now our next inevitable progression to obtaining the change necessary to obtaining normalcy.
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