Vaccine passport possibility

If there has been a constant message through the COVID-19 pandemic it is that we can expect some aspects of life to change forever.

Our awareness of the influence microscopic life can have on our lives, community health, wellbeing and prosperity has soared to a new level and is with us for the long term.

This will be so profound that rules and regulations surrounding everyday life and how we move and integrate in communities are likely to be subject to strict protective processes.

We’ve obviously already experienced versions of these types of measures during lockdowns.

Now we’re seeing crystal-ball analyses of ways to increase levels of community protection while at the same time encouraging us to get back on our feet.

This speculative probe includes everyone and everything from the personal health of an individual or large collective or gathering to business operator and customer security.

This fundamental overview is at the core of the exhaustive message promoting wholesale vaccination – a view most in the scientific world consider the only way to successfully navigate out of this global catastrophe.

A hope is for as many people as possible to willingly get the ‘jab’ to develop broad community resistance to serious illness from infection so we can move around as freely as possible.

But what happens when a high percentage of people don’t like the idea of vaccination, say a big ‘no’ and settle on ‘taking their chances?’

The reality is authorities might invariably be confronted with developing a system of access rules based on ‘those who have’ and ‘those who haven’t’ been vaccinated in an effort to maintain or stimulate socio-economic health. In other words, a vaccination ‘passport’ we keep hearing about where being free to walk in and out of shops, supermarkets, museums, cinemas, football matches, or even friendly gatherings, require an electronic check at the door or gate.

We are already hooked on using electronic pay-wave options at checkouts and have quickly become used to QR coding for tracking to enter workplaces and shops during the pandemic.

It would take little to develop a similar entry system involving a vaccination card.

Whether a vaccination passport is right or wrong, a breach of civil liberties or a necessary health measure for society, the move would be divisive. We hate being segregated as much as we loathe being forced into anything.

France, dealing with a flood of new COVID-19 cases where more than 95 percent are among unvaccinated people, has already introduced and is under pressure to expand such a system.

The controversial move in ‘the birthplace of democratic freedom’ has been met with predictably angry and noisy protests.

Now, we’re hearing suggestions from the highest levels in Australia that providing cash incentives to encourage people to get vaccinated might be an alternative. Seriously?

Keeping ourselves, our families, our culture and our country alive should be incentive enough without throwing dollars at the problem

Our leaders have already had to make some hard decisions over COVID-19. There are a few yet to come.