BY DAVID Z. MORRIS AND SY MUKHERJEE
April 8, 2021 5:49 PM ED Source: Fortune
In an important op-ed in the Washington Post yesterday, columnist Leana S. Wen argues that the term “vaccine passport,” increasingly used to describe COVID-19 vaccination records, could be severely damaging not just to the current vaccination campaign, but for many years to come.
I’ve heard similar concerns from public health and health communications experts over the past four months, but Wen doesn’t dig in to one of their biggest reasons for concern. Calling vaccination records a “vaccine passport” doesn’t just turn off your average Joe: it provides ammunition for the same extremist conspiracy theories upending our entire society.
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Wen’s core point is that the term is both inaccurate and divisive, for essentially the same reason. A passport is generally understood as a government-issued document with significant powers to control a person’s movements. While a system like Israel’s Green Pass has some real parallels with passports, systems rolling out in the U.S. are being used mainly by private entities like restaurants and Major League Baseball to improve the safety of their facilities.
Yet in recent weeks, as public controversy over the apps has spiked, “vaccine passport”’ appears to have become the default terminology for the media. That’s likely in part because of the technological angle. The transition of vaccine records to apps and digital wallets sure sounds like some radically new thing, and coming up with a new name makes for snappy headlines and better search engine rankings.
But the truth is there’s not all that much new about COVID-19 vaccination records just because they’re on your smartphone. For example, MMR and other vaccines are broadly required to attend public school in the U.S., but we’ve never referred to proof of those shots as a ‘vaccine passport’ allowing kids to get into schools.
These are all fair and true points. But Wen doesn’t dive into the context for her concerns – and that context, particularly in the U.S., makes the “vaccine passport” terminology especially dangerous.
Because “passport” doesn’t just imply government authority. By evoking a national border, it implies a specifically militarized and bureaucratic vision of governmental authority that plays directly into the troubled worldview that has fed conspiracy theories like Qanon, “The Great Reset,” and that old classic, The Lizard People. In these narratives, a common denominator is the idea that at any moment, government ‘thugs’ will come out of the woodwork and, essentially, throw everyone into cages.
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These are all ultimately rooted in a skepticism of government power that is in itself healthy enough, but has been twisted and amplified by disinformation entrepreneurs into towering edifices of delusion. The same impulse has already fostered the idea that COVID itself is an elaborate ruse to implant Americans with tracking microchips. This is false, of course. (To borrow the most concise rebuttal I’ve heard, wouldn’t it have been simpler to just put the chip in everybody’s Big Mac?)
To be clear, governments do often abuse their surveillance powers, and there is ample reason to be cautious about digitizing health records in general. Much of the blame for the latter, though, lies more with Big Tech than government: The ineptitude of companies like Facebook when it comes to protecting (usually much less sensitive) user data has likely poisoned the waters for more beneficial and secure digital-info efforts of all types for decades to come.
That means, yes, any digital version of vaccination records must be built with a level of security not present in most apps. That appears to be happening, including with IBM’s work on the New York vaccination records app (see below).
But pushing for good security doesn’t require inflaming conspiracy theorists by using a term that isn’t even accurate.
David Z. Morris david.morris@fortune.com @davidzmorris
Do you think COVID 19 Vaccines should be required? Do you think it should be a passport, granting access to certain things like returning to school? What should the post COVID 19 world look like?
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