Lucy Carne: Vaccine passports are vital if we want to restore normal public life

If we want life to return normal, vaccine passports must be essential. It’s choosing not to get vaccinated that is discriminatory, writes Lucy Carne.

Don’t know about you, but my social media feed is littered with privileged egotists screaming about oppression from the comfort of their middle-class suburban homes.

“The government can’t tell me what to do just because they think it will keep me ‘safe’,” they screech.

Well, don’t stop at red traffic lights, I want to reply.

More than 110,000 fans a day over four days provided Covid vaccine proof for entry into Chicago’s Lollapalooza music festival to see bands including Foo Fighters and Megan Thee Stallion. Picture: Scott Olson/Getty Images

“They just want to track us and steal our data,” others bleat non-ironically across Facebook and TikTok, as though they’ve never heard of Cambridge Analytica or the CCP.

But if we are to address this “pandemic of the unvaccinated”, as Australia’s chief medical officer Professor Paul Kelly so aptly described it on Friday, presenting scientific fact, common sense and kindness won’t work.

Irrespective of whether they’re the BioCharged, Nuremberg-Code-lecturing, vaccines-contain-microchips nutters or the indulgent wellness narcissists who are fine with Botox and IVF but are anti-vax purely because they believe they’re better than the virus, it’s time to shut down their disinformation and shut them out.

It’s time for us and them. The vaccinated versus the anti-vaxxers.

It’s time to talk seriously about vaccine passports.

An Israeli man shows his "green pass" (proof of being fully vaccinated against the coronavirus) before entering the Green Pass concert for vaccinated seniors in Tel Aviv. Picture: Jack Guez / AFP

And before you come at me screaming about civil rights and the nanny state, I’m not advocating for mandated vaccines or a no jab, no job in every workplace.

Don’t worry, you should still be allowed to crack backs and peddle your MLM oils without being vaccinated.

I’d just really prefer it if you didn’t breathe your disease on me. I want to rest assured that when the time comes to open up, I’m not sharing my vaccinated freedom with anti-vaxxers.

This should be a system no different to the vaccine passport equivalent that Australian parents must provide when enrolling children in childcare and schools.

Somehow, we’ve all downloaded our kid’s vaccine statement from Medicare without invoking Josef Mengele.

The high vaccination rate in Aussie children is mainly thanks to the No Jab, No Pay policy scheme that withholds payments to parents of children who are not fully immunised or on a recognised catch-up schedule. It also fines childcare centres that take unvaccinated kids. There are obviously exemptions on medical grounds, but not for conscientious objectors.

A French cinema employee checks a patron’s vaccine passport. Picture: Jean-Christophe Verhaegen / AFP

The scheme works, according to numerous studies, resulting in a large rise in catch-up jabs and a national vaccination coverage rate for all five year olds above 95 per cent.

Compare that to our current rate of just over 18 per cent of people aged over 16 fully vaccinated against coronavirus.

Once all Covid vaccines have been widely available to everyone for long enough, the shift will come and the gulf will widen.

The vaccinated will receive more freedoms than the unvaccinated.

“If you get vaccinated, there will be special rules that’ll apply to you,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

“Why? Because if you’re vaccinated, you present less of a public health risk. You are less likely to get the virus. You are less likely to transmit it.

“You are less likely to get a serious illness and be hospitalised, and you are less likely to die.”

British health technology company Heliix’s digital vaccine passport is a mobile app that uses an encrypted code to show the results of a recent COVID-19 test or vaccination using secure technology. Picture: Ethan Miller/Getty Images/AFP

A vaccine passport is in use in France where it’s needed to enter restaurants, cafes, cinemas, museums and most forms of public transport.

Last month the European Union introduced the “EU Digital Covid Certificate” for fully-vaccinated people to travel. Japan, Israel, the UK, South Korea and some US states have also brought in versions of digital vaccine passports for inoculated people to enjoy more freedoms than the unvaccinated, such as skipping quarantine and lockdowns and going to music festivals and nightclubs.

There are predictable objectors. Eric Clapton faced global derision when he announced he would refuse to play to only vaccinated crowds.

This is the 76 year old, who has not only subjected us to the frankly overrated Layla, but pushed misinformed anti-vax theories before scurrying off to get quietly vaccinated.

“I don’t need to hear Dr Fauci play guitar, and I don’t need to hear Eric Clapton give medical advice,” one critic wrote.

“This works out quite nicely as I’m refusing to go to venues that have Eric Clapton in them,” another tweeted.

But if we are to seriously get to a point one day where we attempt to restore public life to something resembling mask-less and lockdown-free normality, vaccine passports must exist.

Vaccine passports will enable our freedom, not restrict us. It is the choice to not get vaccinated that creates the discrimination.

Just like Jehovah’s Witnesses sometimes die because they choose to refuse blood transfusions, so too should anti-vaxxers have the right to avoid the jab and suffer the consequences.

Once they realise they face a life of derision, social isolation and no overseas travel, maybe, just maybe, they’ll finally realise what freedom really entails.