Letter to Oregon Health Authority on a Digital Vaccination Passport

This is the letter I sent to the Oregon Health Authority oppose the planned creation of a statewide digital vaccine passport:

To the Oregon Health Authority:

I’m writing in regards to the proposed digital vaccination pass initiative currently under consideration.

I am strongly opposed to the development of a statewide digital vaccination pass on both ethical and practical grounds.

As far as ethics are concerned, I understand that the system is intended to be voluntary initially. While that is preferable to a mandatory system, Oregon voters have no reason to believe the system would stay voluntary and every reason to assume it would become compulsory shortly after implementation. The current state government has repeatedly contradicted initial commitments on COVID in several areas, and we can reasonably assume that pattern will hold here.

If and when the system becomes mandatory, this digital pass will serve to create a two-tier society that discriminates against people based on their medical decisions. Today, that discrimination would be targeted against individuals who refuse to become fully vaccinated against Covid, which constitute a minority of Oregonians. But once this system is established and normalized, it will be much easier to target other individuals and coerce other medical decisions in the name of the public good. Implementing this system for the Covid vaccinations would be a serious abuse of power on day one, but it does not take much imagination to see how this power could be wielded in far more appalling ways in the future. No government and no governing agency should ever have the power to do this.

Notably, the ethical considerations here do not depend on one’s view of the Covid vaccines themselves. The question is whether Oregonians’ rights should be made contingent on making a medical decision that is favored by the state. We absolutely should not go down this path.

Another reason to oppose the creation of vaccine passport system is that the result will be highly regressive. Because vaccination rates are positively correlated with income, the discrimination being considered will fall disproportionately on people of lesser means—many of whom have worked in person throughout the pandemic, risking infection from Covid before vaccines existed, while other Oregonians like me were able to work from home. Whether this is the intended effect of the digital pass is irrelevant; it will be the result. Oregon’s policies throughout the pandemic have benefited the work-from-home class at the expense of the generally lower wage professions that cannot work remotely. Introducing a digital vaccination pass will be yet another regressive COVID policy and further compound the harms already caused to date.

The practical problems with a vaccine passport system are also considerable. Even if the new system was implemented flawlessly and universally in Oregon, the evidence is clear that a vaccination passport system will not stop the spread of Covid-19. Unfortunately, the available Covid vaccinations in the US do not appear to prevent or meaningfully slow infection or transmission, and this fact has been acknowledged by the CDC. (This fact was the impetus for re-recommending the usage masks earlier this summer.)

If we do not wish to take the CDC’s word at face value on this question though, we can also look to the numerous examples of highly vaccinated jurisdictions still experiencing major Covid waves.

In the US, we can look at Vermont and Maine, the 1^st and 3^rd most vaccinated states, respectively. Both states boast over 72% of their entire population fully vaccinated, compared to 64% for Oregon per CDC data. Despite these high vaccination rates, both Vermont and Maine are currently experiencing their most significant wave of cases of the entire pandemic, and the wave began well after high vaccination rates were achieved.

Several countries and jurisdictions around the world have also exhibited this same pattern, experiencing their largest wave of cases even after achieving high vaccination rates. A few examples include Germany, Austria, Iceland, Singapore, and the Netherlands, among others. Many of these countries have now reenacted aggressive non-pharmaceutical interventions in response to the recent surge in cases.

Finally, we can also look at Oregon’s own results for further evidence that the current vaccines are not able to prevent a subsequent surge in infections. Oregon’s primary vaccination goal this year was consistent with the national goal set by the Biden Administration of having 70% of adults become at least partially vaccinated. Oregon achieved this milestone on July 3, 2021, and at the time, many public health experts expected these vaccination levels would be sufficient to blunt future outbreaks. Unfortunately, this has not proved true for Oregon.

From the beginning of the pandemic up until July 3, 2021—a span of nearly 16 months—Oregon had recorded a total of around 209,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19. In the 5 months since achieving our vaccination milestone, Oregon has recorded an additional 180,000 cases. Indeed, the average daily case rate in Oregon has been dramatically higher after reaching our vaccination target than it was prior. To be clear, I don’t believe the vaccinations are the cause of the new cases, but this data does strongly suggest that they are unable to prevent infection and transmission. And as noted, this is consistent with the results from other US states, from various countries around the world, and with the CDC Director’s own statements.

Precisely why the vaccinations are unable to prevent infection right now is unclear. It may be caused by waning efficacy due to the passage of time, or the vaccines may be less effective against the Delta variant than they were against the original strain. But regardless of the cause, what matters for the purpose of this discussion is that a vaccine passport system cannot stop the spread of Covid because the vaccines themselves cannot do this. The vaccines may confer a private benefit to the recipient in the form of a reduced risk of severe illness from Covid. But they do not create a public benefit because they do not prevent infection or transmission.

To sum up, establishing a vaccine passport system is wrong ethically and practically. This system will further erode Oregonians’ rights, discriminate disproportionately against those of lesser means, and it will still fail to slow the spread of Covid.

It must be rejected categorically, and I urge you to take this action.

Sincerely,

Eric Schuler