Far too much debate in the UK about responding to SARS-CoV-2 has been about short-termist responses. So, for instance, just as every lockdown has begun to have real effect it has been lifted in the name of the economy.
The result has been we are now in the longest lock-down of all, we’ve got the deepest economic setback of any major economy (though obviously there are other things going on to cause that too) and we have one of the highest death rates in the world. Not good.
It ought to be becoming clearer to more people that, actually, even after a mass vaccination programme (the one area where the UK has, thankfully, done well), the virus will not be gone from our lives. I don’t think there will, in my lifetime, be a return to what was fully “normal” as recently as December 2019.
Over time we can expect, as a species, to see the threat from the virus diminish as, like the common cold, more children who catch it while young grow to adulthood with a fully primed immune system. For the rest of us there will be vaccines – and there will also be mutations that may threaten our vaccine-acquired immunity.
We cannot stop dangerous mutations arising – so long as the virus is in circulation it will mutate and, if a mutation improves the virus’s ability to evade vaccines, those mutations will spread.
We can, though, slow the speed of the spread of any mutation through – you guessed it – social distancing, mask wearing and test-and-trace protocols. So these may eventually be relaxed as vaccination reaches more and more people, but it is hard to see them ever going away completely. I don’t expect you are going to be let into a hospital without wearing a mask for very many years to come, for instance.
Once we come to terms with the fact that we are here for the long haul we need to start reordering our society in that light. One of the things that surely must follow is some form of immunity/vaccination passport.
Until recently I thought this was a terrible idea – but since I recognised the truly long-term nature of the threat I have come to see such passports as inevitable, and necessary, and so the key issue is how they are introduced and used.
My initial thoughts are that firstly they should be a citizen’s right – everyone should be able to get one and access shouldn’t depend on wealth.
Secondly they should be regulated to an international standard that, as far as is practical, protects privacy and avoids unnecessary state monitoring. Or to be more direct: if the Russian (or any other) state wants to insist its citizens carry the equivalent of an electronic tag with them everywhere there isn’t much we can do to stop it, but we could say such devices are not recognised for use here.
Thirdly – and related to the first point – with the obligation to have one should come the right to access services. Public bodies or other service providers might have legitimate reasons to restrict access to those who have been vaccinated or are otherwise certificated, but they should not be able to refuse access to anyone who meets the criteria either. In other words if your body or company requires access to the information the passport contains then it must also submit to the responsibilities that come with it.
cartesian product ... stuff about computing mostly 