If nothing else, this pandemic will teach us how inescapably global our world has become, so to speak. A virus that doesn't recognize any border of any kind forces us to find solutions that are, well, universal. Global. No one is safe until everyone is safe.
"For some period of time, most all of us are going to have to demonstrate either negative Covid-19 testing or an up-to-date vaccination status to go about the normal routines of our lives, " said Dr. Brad Perkins, the chief medical officer at the Commons Project Foundation, a nonprofit in Geneva that is a member of the vaccine credential initiative.
The "vaccine credential initiative." Sounds great. But there's no realistic plan, at this point, to make it universal. Every country vaccinates according to its own schedule and system, and in the United States, there are fifty separate schedules and systems, most of which do not communicate with each other, no less.
The VCI would require hundreds of complex systems running at different speeds, in different languages, to all get themselves standardized and available at a moment's notice. As long as people want to get on planes, go to concerts and conferences and meetings and sporting events and work and school, eat at restaurants, drink at bars, use public transit of any kind - as long as they want to go somewhere and do something where they are less than six feet from strangers for more than five minutes - it's highly likely that they'd like those strangers to prove that they've been vaccinated. I know I would. It's not clear that any part of economy can return to normal until we can do that.
By the way, the "credential" in VCI will be digital, so you've got to have a smartphone. Don't have one? Can't afford one? Can't get online? Some other reason? Too bad. So - not universal.
And the VCI is not the only initiative planning to get us all credentialed. Remember the IATA travel pass? There's also CommonPass, IBM's Digital Health Pass, and Clear's Health Pass. Etcetera. Remember when there were nearly every phone had a different charger jack? Chargers everywhere, but your phone's still dead.
It's great that the need is recognized and sophisticated tech corporations are working on it. But don't we need it right now, or at least in the next month or two?* And don't we need it to be universal?
Seems like we've got a long way to go. Maybe by the time we go flashing past Ceres?
* - Actually, if we don't get more organized about vaccinating a lot of people quickly, it probably won't matter for a long time.
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