1) The problem vaccine passports are trying to solve does not really exist.

There is a widespread belief that that Britain will not be able to achieve herd immunity to Covid due to a substantial proportion of the population refusing vaccines. Supporters of vaccine passports believe that banning the unvaccinated from nightclubs, pubs, large events and other places will compel them to get vaccinated.

The data simply does not support this belief. 88% of adults have already taken at least one dose of the vaccine. In the young adult (18-29) age group, which is often singled out for alleged anti-vax sentiments, 66% have had at least one jab, which is a good result considering that they only became fully eligible for vaccination about a month and a half ago. This number is certain to rise in the coming months as only a vanishingly small fraction of society will refuse to be vaccinated on principle: 7 – 10% of young adults and 4% of the general adult population was found to be vaccine hesitant.

2) Vaccine passports are an unnecessarily drastic step before softer measures are exhausted

If there is a real fear that the vaccine take-up in young adults will stall at 66%, why not try the carrot before the stick? It is natural that after 18 months of emergency measures the public would rather chop off some heads than try reasoning with people, but it would be far cheaper and easier to offer a £100 payment to each fully vaccinated young adult (think of it as a symbolic payment in recognition of the disproportionate sacrifices young adults were asked to make during the pandemic).

3) Vaccine passports ignore natural immunity due to prior infection

There is now a good body of evidence showing that recovery from prior infection offers strong protection against re-infection. Freaking out about 34% of young adults being unvaccinated ignores the fact that a substantial portion of them will already have protection (90% of 30-year-olds were found to already have antibodies against Covid). If there truly is a concern about unvaccinated young people, surely the problem will solve itself quickly as they get infected by and recover from Covid. We know that the Covid only presents a small risk to healthy young adults, and by now everyone choosing to remain unvaccinated is willingly taking that risk.

4) The fully vaccinated can still spread Covid

The argument that the unvaccinated pose a threat to the vaccinated does not stack up. While vaccines offer strong protection against serious illness or death from Covid, the most recent data emerging from highly vaccinated countries (such as Israel or Gibraltar) shows that vaccines are less effective at preventing infection.

5) The risk of eroding civil liberties is too great

Once pubs and other venues are forced to implement a mechanism for checking everyone’s vaccine passports on entry, it will become trivially easy to expand the system to advance other social objectives, and transform Britain into a “papers, please” society. The slope seems particularly slippery in this instance: once vaccine passports are normalised, who could possibly say no to linking the vaccine database to also check for say police arrest warrants on entry? What about banning criminals and other social undesirables? Once it’s normal for pubs, why not roll it out to all public venues?

So why do people still want vaccine passports?

This blogger continues to hang on to the sometimes unpopular belief that society’s response to the pandemic is best understood through the lens of politics and mass psychology, rather than science. The answer to why (and when) various measures were implemented lies not in epidemiological models, but in the fears and motivations of the public and their leaders.

The largely vaccinated British public is ready to go back to pubs, but is still very much uncomfortable with Covid remaining in circulation in society (even though the government now says Covid will circulate forever). This drives public demand for highly visible, symbolic measures so that we can pretend we are being kept safe. Cracking down hard on the anti-vax nut jobs is a great way for the government to signal it is still tough on Covid (and who does not love tough leadership in times of crisis?).

The fear that a small group of people is undermining some social goal, and therefore the government must persecute them aggressively for the benefit of wider society is perhaps the longest-running theme in the history of human society. As much as we like to believe that 2020/21 is the pinnacle of scientific progress and rational thought, in many ways we are still the same humans that we have always been.