Are there any penalties for carrying and/or showing a fake Covid-19 vaccination card?
Showing them to who? The only person who has asked to see mine was the National Guard at the drive-through vaccination place when I went to get my second shot. They certainly weren’t produced to discourage unauthorized duplication.
“I don’t need to wear a mask or keep my distance from people-I have a vaccination card!”
I can see anti-vaxxers trying this dodge.
As soon as China started with quarantine release certifications last year, I figured some “enterprising soul” would come up with the idea of faking those. Luckily, the way it’s done here seems to make that stunt impossible.
By “here”, I mean in China.
I just checked online, and “vaccination cards”, both national and international(supposedly CDC) are available for sale.
I could fake one myself with very little effort and I’m really not any sort of making fake documents sort of person.
No reason to bother, though. Those of us who live in lands of freedum haven’t needed to worry about masks or any of that social distancing stuff in the past, why would we worry about a silly piece of cardboard when we have FREEDUM!
In most jurisdictions there will be offences of (a) forgery, and (b) presenting a forged document with the intention that it should be taken as genuine. You’d need to look at the precise details of the legislation in the relevant jurisdiction and on the precise facts of the case — the use made, or attempted to be made, of the fake certificate — but I’d say this is where any legal peril is likely to come from.
I can also imagine some employers requiring their employees to get vaccinated. So the penalty for using a fake vaccination card might be getting fired, or some other penalty from one’s employer.
Found an article about Shopify-backed online stores selling fake Covid-19 vaccination cards.
This is as bad as the “don’t need to wear a mask for medical reason” cards/buttons that two of my family members tried to buy.
I was under the impression that a “vaccination passport” would be an app. I see this an argument for actually having those, instead of trying to say they’re intrusive or unnecessary.
While it’s a problem now, eventually everyone who wants to be vaccinated will be vaccinated. If someone doesn’t want to be but pretends they are, they could get COVID and get sick. I don’t care. At present, due to the low number of people who have been able to get vaccinated, even vaccinated people still need to wear masks.
Anyone who lets people not wear a mask because of a vaccine card (1) hasn’t seen a vaccine card, and (2) doesn’t understand the science.
(1) because it’s right out of the 1950s and would take 20 minutes for an amateur to fake
(2) because vaccinated people may still be able to get infected and transmit the infection, and since the mask is mostly there to protect others from your infection, being vaccinated doesn’t change that.
If some jurisdictions decide to go with some sort of vaccine passport, they will need much, much better cards. It’s a thick piece of paper with some text and a handwritten vaccination date. It’s not even signed by anyone, no stamp, no impression, no watermark.
No doubt, but from what I’ve seen of the IATA “vaccine Passport” app (on an NBC News video) the proof of COVID vaccination is a user-obtained pic of the face of the CDC card. Other info stored in the app is a selfie and the MCR character line on the bottom of your passport’s photo page.
Edit: I believe it’s the one here: The next frontier in air travel: Digital passports as proof of vaccination or testing
What does “user-obtained” mean? No one took a picture of my card before handing it to me, from what I recall.
At least that’ll be self limiting. The people that are going to produce fake cards specifically so they can avoid covid restrictions while also remaining unvaccinated, are the ones that are going to find themselves getting sick.
Yes, I know that some vaccinated people will still get sick and some won’t yet (or can’t ever) be vaccinated. But as time marches on, the group that isn’t vaccinated will be more and more made up of those that refuse to vaccinate and they’ll mostly be passing it around within their community.
What would be interesting would be if we could find out how many anti-vaxxers end up getting the vaccine. Whenever I think about anti-vaxxers, I always like to keep in mind that the majority of them have had all their shots, they’re refusing to give their kids shots and attempting to keep other parents from giving their kids shots as well.
So, now that they have a very real threat of getting sick (as opposed to their kids getting sick), will they get the shot. Probably not, but it would be fun to know how many do get it.
That’s pretty close to murder.
There are at least two different groups of “anti-vaxxers” that are so different that I wish two different names were commonly used. There is the group that is strongly opposed to vaccines for one reason or another and will not be vaccinated under any circumstances.
There is another group ( possibly much larger) than doesn’t have that sort of strong objection - they just want to be free riders on herd immunity. They want everyone else to be vaccinated so that they and their kids get the benefits of herd immunity without taking the tiny risks of being vaccinated. You can see this group when there are measles outbreaks and Disney suddenly requires proof of immunization for admission , or parents realize as the outbreak spreads through their kids school that the vaccination rate is to low to provide herd immunity. Because when not being vaccinated suddenly has a cost, like not being able to go to Disney World or your kid actually getting measles - they get their kids vaccinated.
But in the end, it doesn’t matter. You’re either vaccinated or you’re not. The virus doesn’t care about the reasoning behind your decision.
It’s like when I hear an anti-masker say “I don’t wear a mask to protect myself, I just wear one because I’m forced to because you’re all a bunch of whiny snowflakes”. To which I like to respond by explaining that the virus doesn’t care why you wear the mask, just that you’re wearing it.
Kinda the same thing. No matter how ‘anti-mask’ you are, if you wear one out in public you’re included in the group that wears their mask (not an anti-masker).
Don’t get me wrong, I understand what you’re saying. I’ve heard a lot of people that explain that they’re not anti-vax, but they’re just not ready to get this one yet because it’s so new*. I 100% understand and sympathize with their reasoning, but they’re still going to be part of the problem and not the solution.
Think about what you would call someone if there was a huge measles outbreak in the city and they explained that, while not an anti-vaxxer and they don’t believe in the vaccine-autisum correlation, they’re just not comfortable giving their kids the measles shot. You’d call them an anti-vaxxer, right?
*Of course, the last person I heard say that also said she doesn’t get the flu shot either.
I was responding to this
So, now that they have a very real threat of getting sick (as opposed to their kids getting sick), will they get the shot. Probably not, but it would be fun to know how many do get it.
My point is that there’s a group that would absolutely get the shot as soon as it appeared their kids might get measles or be denied entry to Disney - and their actions are different because their motivations are different. The virus absolutely doesn’t care about the reasoning behind your decision - but I know a good amount of people who are only getting vaccinated because attending XYZ event requires proof of either vaccination or a negative test within X hours of the event. The fact that those events require either vaccination or a negative test drives a certain group of people to get vaccinated. For example, lets say I have season tickets to an MLB team - that’s what 81 games? Even at reduced capacity full season ticket holder will probably get priority, so lets say I can attend 20 games. A lot of people who wouldn’t choose vaccination under other circumstances would choose it if the alternative was taking 20 COVID tests within a specific window before each game
I’d argue that their actions are the same [getting vaccinated] despite their motivations being different. The virus or the school or the community or the people you might accidentally sneeze on don’t care about why you got vaccinated, you either did or didn’t. If you got your shots up to date, even if it’s just to get into Disney, you’ll have to resign from the anti-vaxxer club or at least be demoted to Anti-Vaxxer In Name Only.
I’m not sure how all this relates to my quote. If they get vaccinated, great. If they don’t, they’re going to find that the people getting sick are more and more just the community of those that didn’t get vaccinated.
I guess I’m still not understanding. You either got the vaccine or you didn’t. If you choose not to get it, even if it’s because you’d prefer to be tested 20 times over the next few months, you’re still going to fall into the group of people that actively choose not to get vaccinated, and there’s a name for them. I understand you feel they should have a different name, somewhat un-related to the name commonly applied to people that skip vaccines (for their kids) due to a fear of their kids becoming autistic, but from my point of view, anti-vaxxers, encompasses all the people that choose not to get vaccinated (or choose not to get their kids vaccinated).
I think we’re both on the same side here and just going back and forth over some irrelevant detail.
My point for that entire post was that people that choose to get a fake vaccination card because they choose not to get vaccinated are going to find that they themselves are the ones getting sick because they’re not vaccinated. The rest of us will see our percentage of vaccinated but still sick people drop significantly while the percentage of unvaccinated sick people goes up.
(As a side note, I tried to make sure to say ‘choose not to get vaccinated’ where appropriate. There’s a small, but non-zero percentage of the population that can’t get vaccinated for one reason or another. And while they’re counted in the ‘unvaccinated’ group, they’re not in the group that chooses to not get vaccinated.
Anti-Vaxx Nurse looking for fake vaccine card:
Anti-Vaxx Nurse Exposed For Wanting Forged Vaccine Card (dailydot.com)