“There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection”(see go.nature.com/3cutjqz).
I think this is scientist talk for meaning "likely" but "not exhaustively proven" yet. The article explains the situation very well and I suggest a thorough read. It would be very upending if a virus such as this one did not confer immunity.
edit:
from the referenced article:
> To date, no human reinfections with SARS-CoV-2 have been confirmed.
I suspect viral load is involved. If someone is exposed to enough virus, or often enough, the default antibody response may not be enough.
That's the thing about "immunity passport", it implies here you have someone you can expose to the virus all day long. I
suspect no one can survive unlimited expose to whatever deadly disease without getting sick.
I mean, as I understand it, for most diseases, the purpose of vaccines is to get the (over-used) "herd immunity", meaning people are immune enough on average to stop the spread of the disease. Situation were a substantial portion of people refuse vaccines (thanx, antivaxer) can result in outbreaks where vaccinated people also get sick.
Exposure cuts both ways. In some cases, constant reexposure increases immunity. For example, shingles is believed to be less likely if you are regularly re-exposed to chicken pox.
The current vaccine research is measuring antibody titres (how much) is being generated by an inoculated individual in reference to a recovered patient. The next step is to determine if those antibodies are actually sufficient as they are different.
From my understanding, it should be the other way around that's proved. Because that's kinda how the immunity system works. AFAIK the viruses that you don't get immunity from (assuming you get it and recover) are the odd ones. Like HIV, and from what I know there can be hundreds or thousands of variations of the virus inside a single person.
"Evidence" in this context is medical jargon, not the common meaning of the word. It means "results from randomized controlled trials". There is also "weak evidence" (results from non-randomized trials). I wish they'd make the distinction clear, because if people assume it's the same word they end up thinking the medical professionals are liars or idiots. It's true that all those other viruses are "evidence" in the normal sense, but that's not what they mean.
Immunity in this context doesn't mean immunity forever or 100%. Vaccines provide "immunity" but they don't last forever and don't work perfectly on everyone.
So there's nuance to this that's important. Let's look at measles[0] because we get vaccinated for it (which shows that we can get immunity) but the report says that 9% of cases were people who had been vaccinated.
The crux of this is that immunity doesn't last forever but does last for awhile. In measles it looks like 15 years after your two standard MMR vaccines you get from a kid. We have to recognize too that vaccines aren't perfect. Your immune system might not make as strong of an antibody response as another person. You may lose immunity sooner than others. Etc. But the whole premise of the vaccine is that you can get immunity. And if we look at this study, this worked out for most people. Not many people got measles, and of those that did only 9% were vaccinated, which shows that there is a substantial bias for those that weren't vaccinated.
So when I'm saying that people get get immunity I don't mean forever and to every strain, but that they generally get some protection. In fact, this is an essential component to vaccine theory. If you gain __NO__ immunity (for any period of time) from covid, then a vaccine isn't going to do anything because you can't build an immunity. If you get immunity for a year (like with the flu), I think that's a pretty acceptable risk for many and shows that we could build substantial herd immunity just with the younger populations (like with the flu, which the vaccine there isn't even that great, but better than nothing).
And as another note on Shingles, I don't know about you, but chickenpox parties (because it is A LOT worse when you're older) were a thing when I was a kid (I'm not even 30!) and less than 1% of people get shingles. The main factors are being old, immunocompromised, and getting chickenpox before you're 18 months old. Saying you can get reinfected and will get reinfected are different statements with different risk values.
There are viruses where immunity to one strain makes subsequent infections with other strains much worse[0]. So far there only seems to be one strain of SARS-CoV-2, but it's definitely a risk worth considering.
Citing your paper: "However, there is currently no data whether humans who have recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection are protected from re-exposure" (Under discussion, first paragraph)
A more fair summary is that they tested on monkeys and the results looks good, in their words:
"""
We developed a rhesus macaque model of SARS-CoV-2 infection that recapitulates many aspects of human SARS-CoV-2 infection, including high levels of viral replication in the upper and lower respiratory tract (Fig. 1) and clear pathologic evidence of viral pneumonia [...] data suggest the utility of rhesus macaques as a model for SARS-CoV-2 infection for testing vaccines and therapeutics and for studying immunopathogenesis [...] However, neither nonhuman primate model led to respiratory failure or mortality, and thus further research will be required to develop a nonhuman primate model of severe COVID-19 disease.
Given the near-complete protection in all animals following SARS-CoV-2 rechallenge, we were unable to determine immune correlates of protection in this study. [...] Moreover, additional research will be required to define the durability of natural immunity.
"""
I've read a few reports indicating reinfection, so I'm not sure that's true. There seems to be evidence, it needs collating, assessing, and interpreting by experts.
It certainly points to it working, but it's not conclusive.
The only conclusive test will be a challenge test, where you purposely infect people, or waiting a year after a vaccine to check for reinfection rates.
Except that they'll contract it, spread it to their family, some of them will actually die of it, and a lot more will suffer long term side effects that may be subtle but still dangerous. For example, this disease seems to cause blood clots. You could be fully recovered and drop dead half a year later from a clot breaking loose and getting lodged in your heart.
Family, friends, grandparents, colleagues at work. And those will undoubtedly spread it further, until it eventually reaches people that it actually kills. There simply is no way to safely perform a deliberate "self-infection" in order to get antibodies other than by committing to a radical externally-enforced quarantine for the duration of the infection. And I personally wouldn't trust most of the prime candidates for such a self-infection (young adults fed up with the lack of parties and entertainment) to be responsible enough for that, which is why I confront any ideas that might incentivize such behavior, like immunity passports, with extreme doubt and caution.
When talking about deliberate self-infection, I assumed that there was no "possible" infection. If someone self-infects in an organized fashion, he knows exactly with nearly 100% certainty the point in time at which he became infected, because that would be when he exposed himself to the virus deliberately in a way that practically guarantees a successful infection.
Even if it's as risky as you're implying, which I'm not sure it is, I think a lot of people would do it anyway. Drunk driving is surely a stupider risk, but it happens all the time.
Drunk driving is surely a stupider risk, but it happens all the time
It happens very much for the same reason: it's good for business. Can you imagine the local cops and especially the local judges get serious on DUI's and hand out real prison sentences (5 or 10 years for first offense) for drunk driving? I can't. The local restaurateurs would be dead set against it.
There's plenty of evidence that draconian laws aren't effective. So I'm not sure that a 5-10 year sentence would stop people from drunk driving. Plus, I'm pretty sure the corrections lobby has more power than the restaurant lobbies.
>For example, this disease seems to cause blood clots. You could be fully recovered and drop dead half a year later from a clot breaking loose and getting lodged in your heart.
Isn't blood clots a side effect from lying in hospital beds all day, rather than the disease itself?
It seems to be an endothelial disease. And it causes blood to clot in small vessels all over the body. This may be a mechanism by which is damages the lungs (as well as broken off clots lodging there).
I'm not sure what you mean. You act like you can just go through life and never contract covid. Even if somehow we get a vaccine in a year (which would be a technological marvel) it looks like most people will get it. So why not get it in a controlled environment where you can minimize contact and spread while gaining immunity (which is what we want young and healthy to do so that we can build herd immunity)?
Will there be risks and accidents? Of course, nothing is perfect. But some control sounds like a much better environment than just letting it happen completely uncontrolled.
The Chinese, the South Koreans and the New Zealanders managed to eradicate coronaplague through good old epidemiological detective work. It's looking good in the European countries, too, number of new infections declining. Why isn't this discussed in the context of the US?
(Answer: you'd need proper testing, paid sick leave and especially paid quarantine, but that kind of public health measures is politically unthinkable. My institution "recommends" quarantine for potentially exposed workers, and that isn't enough.)
The Chinese and the South Koreans did not eradicate it and do not expect they'll be able to. 100 million people are under lockdown orders in China right now.
The number of new infections in South Korea is low, and I fully expect the Koreans to squash any new clusters that may appear. It helps that the population is onboard with the public health measures; when they had that cluster that originated in a nightspot they promptly shut down nightspots again, and that didn't trigger protests.
The Chinese have that problem with their porous border with Russia and North Korea, where the pestilence is uncontrolled. It's a continuous source of new cases, but I expect that these will not spread far.
As long as it was completely voluntary and that there was a very strict 3-week quarantine after, I really wish this was an option. A quick search tells me the US has about 5 million hotel rooms. Take all these hotels that are closed/empty and use them as Variolation centers. Let people come out only after they tested negative for the presence of the virus and positive for the antibody. Split the $1200.00 between the person and the hotel owner, get costs of health insurance also covered by patient and hotel owners.
Granted, there are still very serious ethical issues, in the sense that we don't know if there are any long-term damages caused by the virus. But at least it will be an option for those who oppose the current isolation rules, it requires skin in the game from everyone involved and it could work almost as a damage-reduction policy (as the infected ones would not go back home until they are cleared)
Creating the incentive is still a problem though. If a certain percentage of those people require hospitalization, then you have a limited capacity for how many people can voluntarily infect themselves. The best case scenario would be that infections are successfully rationed, and you end up with a government imposed class system of immune/not-immune. The more likely scenario is that you can’t effectively control voluntary infection, and create the serious risk of running out of hospital beds. And that’s really just the logistical challenge, putting aside a number of other ethical concerns, which include the government saying “in order to regain your liberty, you must infect yourself with a deadly virus”.
35% are completely asymptomatic, 45% have mild symptoms, 15% need hospitalization and 2-3% die, mostly old people.
Set up a hotel in Vegas with 3000 rooms, 450 ICU beds. Start with people under 30 years old. Have people get infected with a weakened version of the virus.
In the first 1 or 2 iterations of people, measure the antibodies in each person, and do a test for how long people are contagious for. We STILL don’t know this for a fact. Also measure how long it takes for people to become immune. Do tests like figure out which people are more susceptible to severe symptoms or which people are more likely to have asymptomatic symptoms. Again, we STILL don’t know this.
Cycle the asymptomatic and non-contagious people out first and keep doing it until the ICU beds are full. As an ICU bed becomes empty add the appropriate number of people into the test to get them infected. This seems ethical to me.
I bet a lot of younger people would be willing to do this especially if their chance of death is 0.1% or lower and they can go back to work sooner.
Once we gather valuable data from this, then move up in terms of risk and keep going until we have herd immunity.
I’m almost 50, with a few comorbidities but if I knew I would get a weakened version of the virus with dedicated bed and top health care, not only would I volunteer but I would also pay for it out of my own pocket. I’m sick of being afraid and part of the fear is the lack of understanding and misinformation that is being spread. We need science To answer a lot of questions but they aren’t very helpful right now, or at least they aren’t answering the questions we need. We need volunteers to get themselves infected so that we understand what is going on with this virus. if we can do this in a predictable and safe way and allow science to learn from it it’s a win win. We need to stop worrying about ethics especially if people are willing to volunteer themselves.
This doesn't actually address either of the points I raised. You still have to ration infection. You still create a government imposed class system. You still have your liberty dependant on whether or not you allow the government to infect you with a deadly virus. Even putting aside the myriad of ethical reasons that this is a bad idea. Your solution still doesn't have a way to deal with your non-immune class members seeking out infection because they can't/don't want to wait for their government virus ration.
Trust me, you don't want to belong to that group. The reason you are in hospital is that you have serious pneumonia for weeks and may walk out with permanently reduced lung function. Have you seen Boris Johnson before and after?
Yeah, I am well aware of the ethical issues and honestly I know that what I proposed has countless ways of backfiring somehow.
I would only seriously propose such a thing for those that really want to get out of the isolation measures and for those business owners that worry more about their pockets than human life. For instance, in my proposal people really would not leave the hotel until cleared. If hospitalization were needed, it would be to the hotel owner to provide a section of the rooms to be equipped, and bear the costs of it. Voluntarily infected => No hospital bed for you.
Between the fact that a nontrivial number of 20-30 year olds have died, and the serious but poorly understood post-Corona symptoms which may be chronic or lifelong (blood clots, paralysis, lung tissue scarring/reduced lung capacity, Corona Toe, etc) I don’t think any 20-something who’s been reading the news is going to be too keen on the idea of “just getting it over with”.
There may be less well-informed people who would be down for something like this, but it’s not a decision that would be driven by a realistic appraisal of what we know and what we know we don’t know.
I mean, it depends on how many things are locked behind immunity passports. If it's just a convenience that exempts you from international travel quarantines, sure, that doesn't really change the calculus. If bars reopen in July for immune people and 2022 for everyone else... I think there are a lot of young party animals who legitimately like clubbing enough that they'd consider it worth the risk.
That's going to happen anyone way. There are parties happening at least in the states. I don't know if its a good idea to prevent people from living their lives in this way.
Is bad because of the incentives to cheat to get one, fake one, could create false sense of security when Covid mutate, and dangerous behaviour seeking to get infected to chance immunity because of advantages offered of having one
That article makes a good argument for immunity passports.
- People don't seem to be getting this disease twice in three months, even if exposed again. So there's clearly some level of immunity. In a month, we'll know if it's good for four months. It doesn't have to be lifetime. A year or two would be enough. By then there will be either a vaccine or herd immunity.
- The first batch of rushed antibody tests were not very good, but there are reliable antibody tests now. Above 99%, anyway. That's good enough.
- If huge numbers of tests will fix the problem, that just takes money. Far cheaper than a 3 trillion dollar "stimulus". Cost goes down with volume, too.
- Too few survivors - right now, yes; over time, no. New York City is somewhere in the 15% - 20% range now. By the time the plan is in place, there will be more.
- As for "marginalized groups", this seems to hit Asians and blacks worse. So those groups will have more survivors, more immunity passports, and better access to jobs.
> - As for "marginalized groups", this seems to hit Asians and blacks worse. So those groups will have more survivors, more immunity passports, and better access to jobs.
What you're describing is a perfectly fair system, but that is not how marginalization works in practice.
I can't see the future, but I imagine that groups who strongly associated with corona virus would face much greater scrutiny when obtaining documentation. Historical examples of this kind of effect can be seen in civil war pension discrimination[0] and in the general belief in racial stereotypes[1]. There's every reason to believe that the factors that make a group vulnerable would be redoubled in through a certification process.
You know that if you have a 3% prevalence of the virus in the population, and test 100 people with a test that has 99% specificity and sensitivity, then 3 will be positive, and most likely test positive, but 1 will test positive despite being negative.
Thus, of the 4 people testing positive, only 3 will have antibodies and immunity.
Not sure that's good enough.
(Note that this problem diminishes not only as the tests get better, but as the virus spreads more.)
the rate of infection (and immunity development) is going down everywhere. it seems high immunity level will take too many months to arrive even in the most affected cities. By that time the virus will have mutated, like other coronaviruses
the graph shows new cases are down from the peak and decreasing. this means immunity development is going to be a lot slower than it has been until now
About two years ago, I learnt about a successful HEPATITIS B Virus treatment from Herbal Health Point (ww w. herbalhealthpoint. c om), I was on the treatment for over 7 months and tested negative after I completed the treatment. Its almost unbelievable how the treatment alleviated the virus. I completed the treatment two years ago and still negative!
Whether antibody tests are made official or not, their results will begin being requested before their efficacy has been proven. I’ve already started seeing it in New York, if only as a polite request.
Focus should be on improving test quality, understanding joe immunity works and increasing availability.
This article reads as a perfect is the enemy of the good piece. Limiting something potentially beneficial because not everyone can have it is a nice thought, but it backfires.
I'm surprised those who have survived covid haven't found a way to self-identify, like green wristbands or something that say "immune" or "survivor," and wear those in place of masks.
Not recommending this, it would still create some of the same problems, but I'm surprised it just hasn't naturally emerged from individual incentives.
If you're legally required to make people wear masks when they enter your store you can't just say "oh, but there are these peeps who said that they already had the virus, they said they could be identified by their green wristbands, I will let those in without a mask". Local law enforcement will first laugh at you, then threaten to close your store if you don't comply with the law which does not exactly include a paragraph about exempting people due to whatever kind of self-chosen fancy "survivor IDs".
I'm resigned to the fact that our leaders are fools, living in intellectual bubble candy-lands, totally unaware of human nature.
The article presents neat, philosophical arguments.
But the real reason we can't have 'immunity passports' is that large swaths of young people will be swarming to get infected on purpose.
Massive numbers of people will either think 'there is no risk' or 'are willing to take the risk' or 'feel the need to take the risk' (i.e. for income).
Bragging about their 'freedom passports' on Instagram, egging others on.
I can see low-grade Instagram celebs doing 'team infections' on social media, going into a house together and getting infected.
I can see poorly raised teens making pacts. Semi lawless young people just going out and getting it.
Other young people taking bad cues for influencers.
Think of the problems FB and YouTube will have. Will they have to censor anyone promoting 'getting infected'?
The mere thought of 'immunity passports' is DOA for that reason alone, and of all the articles I've seen on the subject, they've never bothered to address this most obvious issue.
Since very few people under 25 die of this, that's probably OK. And then we have a workforce.
This is actually an argument for giant 3-week rave parties in isolated areas. Everybody gets tested on the way out. Ones with antibodies and no virus get a passport. Then they get job offers.
Extreme, but better than the current "open, stay open, and keep dying" plan.
"Since very few people under 25 die of this, that's probably OK. And then we have a workforce."
Wow - absolutely not - the notion of people - anyone - purposely infecting themselves with a deadly disease that actually does kill quite a number of people - is absurd.
The notion that the government may indirectly encourage it is very irresponsible.
This is aside from even the fact that quite a lot of those people will still need hospitalization, and of course, they become carriers and will infect others.
A 'wave of young people getting infected' would cause the hospitals to spike again, get more healthcare workers and 'all the other people' in the hospitals infected as well.
We're going to have to aggressively socially distance and change a lot of our habits for the next 18 months or so as vaccines, cures, therapies etc. are developed - all of these things combine to bring R0R/R1 the numbers down.
> Wow - absolutely not - the notion of people - anyone - purposely infecting themselves with a deadly disease that actually does kill quite a number of people - is absurd.
It kills almost nobody under 25. It's an extremely low risk for that group.
I personally find it highly immoral to remove the rights of some people only for not having had a disease, this is very, very close to eugenics in my book.
"This is very, very close to eugenics in my book."
First, it's nothing like eugenics at all.
It's not the policy that is degrading your situations, it's the disease.
The policy is just an official recognition of the situation.
If you have a disease like AIDS, you cannot go around knowingly affecting people.
We already have public policy in place for similar such things.
'COVID Passports' are just a mechanical effectuation of policies we already put in place.
Yes, it comes along with ethnical questions, but if it were not for people racing to get themselves infected, it would be pragmatic.
Consider your 'concern for your rights' for a moment wherein the entire world on 'lockdown'. People literally locked in their homes working out 'prisoner's dilemmas'. 30 Million people have been rendered unemployed, many businesses have been shut down and people are bankrupt. What about their rights? Or forget 'rights' - what about their livelihoods and the destruction of their savings, homes etc.? It's more of a pragmatic concern than a moral issue.
It's not the disease, as in the suggested solutions will actually restrict the rights of people who haven't got the disease. Not that people who are sick deserve to have their rights curtailed, see below.
> If you have a disease like AIDS, you cannot go around knowingly affecting people.
This sounds so, so wrong. I believe that thinking similar to this generated the terrible situation and ostracisation that people who got AIDS in the late '80s had to face.
> rights' for a moment wherein the entire world on 'lockdown'.
The entire world is not on "lockdown" anymore. I live in a country who is slowly exiting one (after 2+ months), as does most of Europe, and even though we have never been the bastion of democracy we have managed to do it without resorting to the ostracisation of people.
This is the gist of the last reason they list in the article. ("Threats to public health.")
But yes, to me it's weird that it's not the first. People dislike following lockdown rules already, imagine if we start rewarding their lack of caution with never having to follow the rules again.
On the one hand I agree with the gist of this article -- that those with less privilege will be worse off because it will be harder for them to get the certificate.
On the other hand, we already have this in California. You can't attend school without your vaccinations. Although the state will provide the vaccinations for free if you can't afford them.
The problem is it actually is a good idea right now to operate under the assumption that antibodies provide immunity, but in the future it may not be.
But if you allow a program that gives certificates for having antibodies, it will be really hard to put that genie back in the bottle.
"""
If universal, timely, free access to a vaccination becomes possible, then it could be ethically permissible to require vaccine certification for participation in certain activities. But if access to a vaccine is limited in any way, then some of the inequities we highlight could still apply, as the literature on uptake of other vaccines attests
"""
is any country actually issuing those "passports"? afaik none of the countries that opened up do that
a more pertinent question is how to monitor the quarantine of infected people for the following months. asian countries used quite harsh measures for that
These arguments are uniformly terrible. Let's go over them point by point.
> COVID-19 immunity is a mystery
No. It's not. Recovered people are almost certainly immune. There's evidence that's come out recently to actually empirically confirm this, but it's also how almost all diseases work, and so it's a super reasonable prior in the absence of evidence. This whole "we haven't positively proved it, therefore we have no idea" position that's being taken in some corners of the healthcare community is ridiculous, dangerous, and wrong.
> Serological tests are unreliable. The volume of testing needed is unfeasible. Tens to hundreds of millions of serological tests would be needed for a national immunity certification programme.
Some serological tests are unreliable. So use the reliable ones, problem solved. The US is doing hundreds of thousands of tests a day. That's enough for this program to work.
> Too few survivors to boost the economy.
This may be true in some areas, but it's certainly not true in NYC, where 20% of the population has been infected already. Even if it doesn't boost the economy, it'd allow freedom of movement to people who have recovered - that seems like a valuable thing to me on its own.
> Monitoring erodes privacy.
No it doesn't. Give someone an immunity certificate. If they get stopped outside when they're not supposed to be, they present it to the police and go on their way. Just like a drivers license or any form of identification now.
> Marginalized groups will face more scrutiny.
No. We do not need any extra monitoring to do this. Just take the current system with its current restrictions, and lift the restrictions for people with a certificate of immunity.
> Unfair access. With a shortage of testing, many will not have access.
First of all, unfair access is a choice. Design the system so it's fair, if you're worried about that. Second of all, unfair access is not a reason to deny access to everyone.
> Societal stratification.
This is literally the point. To stratify by recovered/immune. If you actually want to get into this, traditionally marginalized groups have been disproportionately infected by this virus, which means they will be disproportionately granted immunity certificates. If anything, this will stratify in the opposite way from 'traditional' stratification, and that seems like a fine thing to me.
> New forms of discrimination
This is just a restatement of the last two points.
> Threats to public health. Immunity passports could create perverse incentives. If access to certain social and economic liberties is given only to people who have recovered from COVID-19, then immunity passports could incentivize healthy, non-immune individuals to wilfully seek out infection — putting themselves and others at risk
Driver's licenses create perverse incentives. That's not a reason not to issue them. If someone infects themselves with covid to get an immunity passport, that's fine, we'll just get to herd immunity that much faster.
Remember, immunity passports aren't putting more restrictions on anyone. They're just lifting extant restrictions on those who have recovered. This idea that it's going to erode privacy or rights is such a crazy false choice I don't even know where to begin. The reasoning in this article is just so, so bad.
Vaccination certificates can be easily obtained through a quick, safe, procedure, and are waived in the rare cases where the procedure wouldn't be safe.
> Strategies that focus on the individual — using conceptions of ethics rooted in libertarianism — contradict the mission of public health.
This is quite the claim. Unfortunately, it's not really backed up by much. Not to mention that the idea of an "immunity passport" is pretty anti-libertarian to begin with, so it just seems like odd shade-throwing.
> because of structural inequities, people of colour are dying from COVID-19 at much higher rates than are white people..
I was under the impression that people of color are more impacted by COVID-19 due to certain health profiles (e.g. diabetes being more common in black communities than, say, Asian communities). I'm not really sure how the jump is made here to "structural inequities." COVID-19 is just one co-morbidity and claiming otherwise is just agenda-waving.
> I was under the impression that people of color are more impacted by COVID-19 due to certain health profiles (e.g. diabetes being more common in black communities than, say, Asian communities).
That's one factor, but there are many. Hospitals in low income areas are not as well funded and supplied. Access to primary care may be more limited. Heavier concentrations of jobs with less ability to work from home. etc.
But that does not explain the same effect in sweden, where also the people of color were much more affected. And sweden is very homogenized, compared to US.
Less effective communication into immigrant communities (which might not pay attention to normal government communications, not understand the intent behind it or not even speak the language) has been cited as one of the possible reasons: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/04/21/sweden-coronavirus-anti...
I love that claim because it makes it clear how many people advocating for economic restrictions due to public health concerns with COVID are fundamentally advocates for statism and seem to relish the opportunity to wield gov't control over the economy.
> Strategies that focus on the individual — using conceptions of ethics rooted in libertarianism — contradict the mission of public health.
Immunity passport (or any other pandemic-prevention tools) focus on the population, not an individual. (It is not if you can or cannot get infected, it is if you are likely to infect others!)
I am disappointed by the populistic vibe of this article, endorsed by Nature. Sure, there are problems with the idea of the immunity passport. But the question is - what are the alternatives?
They gave much less scrutiny to the idea of a vaccine (that no-one knows if and when it is going to be available) and tracking (which works in Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, but in other countries it fails miserably). They both suffer from many similar issues as the passport (tracking: regarding privacy, vaccine: access to less privileged groups, etc).
If we can make the whole population immune - it is the best. If there are some people immune - it makes no sense restricting their traveling rights if they are not increasing risk of infecting others.
Maybe there's some confusion in terms about what "focus on the overall population" means, but a mandatory license to go about your business is surely not libertarian as the article suggests.
Immunity Passports are a great idea because it decreases fear. This is assuming that people aren’t forging these certificates. But if I know that the delivery person is verifiably immune and won’t transmit the disease, or if the cook at a restaurant and the servers are immune, I’m more likely to go there. I would even pay extra.
Decreasing fear is what is going to save this economy otherwise we are looking at another 2-3 years of economic paralysis.
This is my biggest fear. That the government support for people rendered jobless or furloughed due to covid would end, businesses would start reopening, but they require immunity passports. This would cause many people, especially those in poverty, to purposefully contract corona so they can get a job.
I think they would rather give immunity bonuses to those with passports and pass that to customers. I’m okay paying more for people that I know are immune.
As of 3 days ago there is:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/05/19/scie...