Vaccination nation

[Tee_Bee]

How about just laminating a copy of the original card? These aren't drivers' licenses, for cryin' out loud.

I would not laminate the card. It has lines below the second shot for other boosters, which we may have to get in less than a year. Just get a slip cover for it like for a baseball card to protect it.

Yes, I noticed those lines and, yes, an hour with a printer, stickers, and the card stock I already have seems sufficient to make dozens of new cards if one were inclined.

[polly_mer]

I would not laminate the card. It has lines below the second shot for other boosters, which we may have to get in less than a year. Just get a slip cover for it like for a baseball card to protect it.

Yes, I noticed those lines and, yes, an hour with a printer, stickers, and the card stock I already have seems sufficient to make dozens of new cards if one were inclined.

How about just laminating a copy of the original card? These aren't drivers' licenses, for cryin' out loud.

For crying out loud, even with vaccination, the default should still be staying home as much as possible, not going to enough places that you're worried about wear and tear on the freakin' card not at all designed for wear and tear.

If we were really going the vaccine passport route, then we would not be responsible for laminating anything ourselves.

[downer]

Part of the issue of whether we are going to become a lamination vaccination nation is how long we expect the pandemic to last. That's a matter of speculation. It is clear that it will last in some areas of the world longer than others. I haven't seen much serious estimation of the time line. So it seems entirely possible that we could still be doing some social distancing and mask wearing, and there could be travel restrictions, 2,3, 4, or more years from now.

[polly_mer]

Part of the issue of whether we are going to become a lamination vaccination nation is how long we expect the pandemic to last. That's a matter of speculation. It is clear that it will last in some areas of the world longer than others. I haven't seen much serious estimation of the time line. So it seems entirely possible that we could still be doing some social distancing and mask wearing, and there could be travel restrictions, 2,3, 4, or more years from now.

Yes.  And the question still becomes why we would be flashing a laminated card everywhere pretending to be normal, but just contributing to the spread (a 0.01% chance becomes a certainty when enough people do it regularly) instead of staying home as the default.

The logic simply doesn't work unless vaccination confers 100% protection to everything Covid and so vaccinated people can go back to normal.  Nothing I've read from credible scientific sources concludes anything like that.

Politically, people might want passports, but that's not a useful reality.

[Caracal]

For crying out loud, even with vaccination, the default should still be staying home as much as possible, not going to enough places that you're worried about wear and tear on the freakin' card not at all designed for wear and tear.

If we were really going the vaccine passport route, then we would not be responsible for laminating anything ourselves.

Not going to be a good message if you want more people to get vaccinated. Nor does it really fit with the science. Covid spread is really over dispersed. Doing high risk things leads to a lot of spread. Low risk things, not much. I'm not planning to go hang out in any crowded indoor spaces after I'm fully vaccinated, but I am going to stop worrying about low risk things like going into the book store (masked) or going into the coffee shop to order when there's not a line and drinking it outside on their porch.* If you take something already quite low risk and reduce it by 75-90 percent, you can get it to background level risk. 

*Obviously all dependent on background virus levels. If there's another big surge in my area I might have to decide that while the risk of 5 minutes in the coffee shop or 20 minutes browsing in the store is still low, its gotten high enough that its not a good idea. On the other side if cases go way down this summer that could push even high risk activities down to being extremely low risk if you're vaccinated. And, of course, the value I place on things plays a big role. I'd love to go to a bookstore, but its not that important. Even if levels go up, I'm still going to visit vaccinated family with an unvaccinated kid, unless the CDC recs change based on new information or new risk.

[Caracal]

Part of the issue of whether we are going to become a lamination vaccination nation is how long we expect the pandemic to last. That's a matter of speculation. It is clear that it will last in some areas of the world longer than others. I haven't seen much serious estimation of the time line. So it seems entirely possible that we could still be doing some social distancing and mask wearing, and there could be travel restrictions, 2,3, 4, or more years from now.

Yes.  And the question still becomes why we would be flashing a laminated card everywhere pretending to be normal, but just contributing to the spread (a 0.01% chance becomes a certainty when enough people do it regularly) instead of staying home as the default.

The logic simply doesn't work unless vaccination confers 100% protection to everything Covid and so vaccinated people can go back to normal.  Nothing I've read from credible scientific sources concludes anything like that.

Politically, people might want passports, but that's not a useful reality.

Poly doesn't read my posts (thank god) but she's made this point before and its a really bad one. Its basically the actual version of the straw-man that Covid deniers and minimizers have created where sensible policies to deal with an emergency are presented as "lockdown forever." So, of course, here we have the case for lockdown forever. Great...

Poly really seems to not understand COVID spread which is really over dispersed. Most people don't give Covid to anyone. But small numbers of people give it to a lot of people. Mostly this seems to be about having a person with high virus loads in crowded indoor spaces without masks.   This is actually a pretty persistent problem. Governments keep opening up bars and restaurants even though they are places where there are high levels of spread. At the same time, we really haven't done enough to try to encourage and create safer outdoor spaces.

The logic about vaccines is really crazy here "a 0.01% chance becomes a certainty when enough people do it regularly" That's just a stunningly incoherent  way to think about statistics and risk. Yes, some vaccinated people will get COVID. However, if you take a lot of really small numbers and add them up, you get a...relatively small total number. Vaccinated people taking reasonable precautions are not going to contribute much to COVID spread.

[Caracal]

Part of the issue of whether we are going to become a lamination vaccination nation is how long we expect the pandemic to last. That's a matter of speculation. It is clear that it will last in some areas of the world longer than others. I haven't seen much serious estimation of the time line. So it seems entirely possible that we could still be doing some social distancing and mask wearing, and there could be travel restrictions, 2,3, 4, or more years from now.

Obviously this is all unclear, but from what I've read, COVID is not likely to go away, but its also going to stop being a pandemic and become endemic. There are actually some interesting theories that the other coronaviruses that circulate widely started off as pandemics. In particular there was a nasty 1880 outbreak that was always assumed to be flu, but might have been the emergence of one of those coronaviruses.

The speculation I read was that probably what happened with those previous coronaviruses and would happen with this one if there were no vaccines is that these things would just spread, almost everyone would get it repeatedly as some of the immune protection from getting it the first time wore off. However, longer lasting immunity does usually provide some protection so it would get less deadly as more people got it. Eventually, in about 7-10 years everyone would have been exposed 2-3 times and would have built up long lasting immunity. That immunity would keep a lot of people from getting the virus in the first place and if they did they would probably have pretty mild cold symptoms. The virus would still circulate widely among young kids who hadn't had the time to build up their immunity, but kids don't get nearly as sick as adults from this, so that wouldn't cause a ton of mortality or serious complications. By the time kids got to be 10 or so they too would have been exposed multiple times and have long lasting immunity.

Basically, vaccines can speed up this process and dramatically reduce the death toll both by protecting people from getting sick but also by dramatically reducing spread.

[downer]

Rutgers has already declared that students need to be vaccinated. https://www.rutgers.edu/news/rutgers-require-covid-19-vaccine-students
There are health and religious exemptions -- I will be interested to see what a religious exemption looks like.

Last fall, I raised the issue about whether employers will require staff to be vaccinated. One of my employers already made me sign something last year saying I would get vaccinated as a condition of employment. It will be interesting to see how trends develop. Who will be defending the rights of employers to require vaccinations? Neither party is likely to be enthusiastic about it, for different reasons.

Then there's the issue of fake vaccination certificates. Any idiot could produce a document that looks very much like the ones that people are getting and showing on Facebook. How is Rutgers going to verify that the documentation students provide is real?

[Puget]

Rutgers has already declared that students need to be vaccinated. https://www.rutgers.edu/news/rutgers-require-covid-19-vaccine-students
There are health and religious exemptions -- I will be interested to see what a religious exemption looks like.

Last fall, I raised the issue about whether employers will require staff to be vaccinated. One of my employers already made me sign something last year saying I would get vaccinated as a condition of employment. It will be interesting to see how trends develop. Who will be defending the rights of employers to require vaccinations? Neither party is likely to be enthusiastic about it, for different reasons.

Then there's the issue of fake vaccination certificates. Any idiot could produce a document that looks very much like the ones that people are getting and showing on Facebook. How is Rutgers going to verify that the documentation students provide is real?

1. It is already well established law with other vaccines that schools/universities can require vaccinations for students (and most do) and that employers can do so if it impacts the ability to safely do the job (e.g., medical settings). As soon as the vaccines have full rather than emergency use authorization, I fully expect the same to apply.

2. There are secure vaccine passports in the works (already in use in some countries)-- the record card is not meant to be used for that.

[Cheerful]

So much speculation in recent posts.  Nobody knows what happens next week let alone a few months from now.

Unrelated to my comment above:

As soon as the vaccines have full rather than emergency use authorization, I fully expect the same to apply.

How soon do you think full FDA authorization of Covid vaccines will happen?  I'm not ready to judge people who don't want to get a vaccine until that happens and not sure how I'll feel after.  I want to see the data.  The only way to get reliable, valid data is to let time pass.  But Americans can't behave on Covid matters, so....

Carrying cards around and having vaccine apps on phones is sounding more like Big Brother.  We don't do those things for flu shots.

[Caracal]

Rutgers has already declared that students need to be vaccinated. https://www.rutgers.edu/news/rutgers-require-covid-19-vaccine-students
There are health and religious exemptions -- I will be interested to see what a religious exemption looks like.

Last fall, I raised the issue about whether employers will require staff to be vaccinated. One of my employers already made me sign something last year saying I would get vaccinated as a condition of employment. It will be interesting to see how trends develop. Who will be defending the rights of employers to require vaccinations? Neither party is likely to be enthusiastic about it, for different reasons.

Then there's the issue of fake vaccination certificates. Any idiot could produce a document that looks very much like the ones that people are getting and showing on Facebook. How is Rutgers going to verify that the documentation students provide is real?

They probably aren't, but the number of people who are going to give their school a fake vaccine certificate is a lot smaller than the number of people who are going to decide not to get vaccinated if it isn't mandatory. The good thing about herd immunity is that you don't actually need everyone to be vaccinated. If you have a campus where 90 percent of students are vaccinated, you aren't going to get much spread.

[downer]

Yes, it is legal to require vaccines of students and employees. That doesn't mean there won't be pushback. 

I hadn't seen the news about the NY vaccine passport. There's a info-filled USA Today article about the Excelsior Pass. I admire the optimism that having an app will rule out fakery. But it will definitely make it more difficult.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/03/26/covid-vaccine-passports-new-york-first-vaccination-proof-system/6976009002/

Interesting to see that fake certificates have been circulating widely already.

What's the federal government doing? Will each state have its own system?

[Ruralguy]

I think its reasonable to assume we'll go back in forth with "opening up" (% of stadia that can be occupied, full opening of public schools) and "pulling back" as there are surges. Probably the surges will weaken over time, but with uncertainty over when everyone will be vaccinated (that is, who wants to be), with variants and such around, its hard to predict when, if ever, things will get back to "normal." The question of "should" people travel  or attend concerts and such will eventually boil down to personal risk tolerance because the threats will eventually be low enough that the government in just about ant city or state won't want to get involved. I can say that I personally think people are jumping the gun a bit in assuming this "back to normal" will occur in 3-6 months rather than 1-2 years.

[polly_mer]

One of the most annoying and frightening aspects is current discussion of personal risks by random members of the public instead of community risk from experts.

We're still in community risk for many undesirable things that aren't death.  Neglect of that reality by supposedly educated people is one way that academics undermine their own credibility.

[Puget]

One of the most annoying and frightening aspects is current discussion of personal risks by random members of the public instead of community risk from experts.

We're still in community risk for many undesirable things that aren't death.  Neglect of that reality by supposedly educated people is one way that academics undermine their own credibility.

What exactly do you think should happen Polly? I'm all for continued precautions for the next few months until everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been, but it sounds like you don't think things should open back up even after that, until what point exactly? There is every indication that this coronavirus, like others, is going to be endemic, so we're not going to get to zero cases. Social distancing forever is simply not realistic-- it may work for you (and that's a choice you can certainly make if it does), but people are barely doing it now and certainly aren't going to keep doing so after vaccination, and there is no way to make them. So we have to make decisions that mitigate risk within the realm of what is feasible while balancing other societal and personal needs.