…I’ll answer this tomorrow 
Its 0615 in the morning here and I haven’t been able to sleep because you lot keep firing questions at me 
…the question posed in the OP was: “won’t vaccine passports end up being racially biased?”
So I don’t quite understand the question. I’m addressing the OP. I’m arguing that historically in the US the concerns of marginalized communities have not been taken into account on matters like this.
And that the idea of vaccine passports have been floated around and advocated for by many prominent people. We are even seeing some schemes in the early stages of implementation. Now is as good a time as any to start to listen.
This has real Matt Damon "when we’re talking about diversity, you do it in the casting of the film, not in the casting of the show.” vibes.
Why would you create a plan, then talk to the community, then try to retrofit the plan to accommodate what you have learned, when you could just do the talk in the first place?
From the New Zealand elimination strategy, published in April 2020:
Equity and wellbeing, as well as fulfilling the special relationship between Māori and the Crown under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, is baked into the process. It isn’t an afterthought. It isn’t one item on the list that gets ticked off.
If our elimination strategy failed to consider and mitigate inequitable impacts, then the plan has failed.
And if the impact of vaccine passports on black and marginalized communities is dismissed as a mere “implementation issue” then it seems pretty clear to me that vaccine passports are doomed to fail those communities.
…in the early stages of the pandemic here in NZ the comms were very strictly controlled. We only ever heard from two people: The Prime Minister Jacinda Adern and Dr Ashley Bloomfield, the Director-General of Health.
At any other time in history the Director-General of Health at the NZ Ministry of Health would have been a nameless, faceless civil servant that nobody would ever have heard of. But Dr Bloomfield is a hero here. That man will never have to buy a beer at the pub again. Both him and the Prime Minister addressed the nation almost every single day, often facing a hostile press. The press conferences became so legendary that some smart-arse created an IMDB listing for it.
And the reason why they decided to have these two be the face during the early days of the pandemic wasn’t so they could “spin things to make them look good.” These two knew what they were talking about. They answered off the cuff, honestly, but carefully considered. The Prime Minister was as well informed as any any epidemiologist. At the end of the day after putting Neve to bed she would hop on Facebook Live and answer questions directly from people like me.
And it was this, more than anything else, that got us on board with the strategy.
The Ministry of Health effectively operates at arms length from the government. And the messaging from all arms of the government are carefully crafted to make sure they comply with the equity and the wellness principals outlined in my previous post.
Regarding the Whitehouse tweet? That wasn’t carefully crafted. It wasn’t well considered. It wasn’t drafted by a professional science communicator working in tandem with other branches of the Federal government to ensure consistency of messaging.
They took the CDC guidance and recontextualized it to emphasise “no more masks”. It was the Biden Administration’s “Mission Accomplished” moment. It was political. There is no other reason why they would have posted such a stupid thing.
That tweet was in May. We are now in August. Do you think that maybe conditions have changed that necessitated a relook at the “no more masks” policy?
…you miss the point.
The CDC guidance didn’t say “no more masks.”
The fact that you’ve called it the “no more masks” policy pretty much says it all.
Trust in government, trust in government messaging, is fragile. And once the genie is out of the bottle its very hard to put that genie back in. And the message “no more masks” that removes the nuance and caveats surrounding that message will quickly take on a life of its own.
And if you add to that a casual indifference from the people who made that announcement (because it suited their political needs at the time) and the whirlwind of disinformation that is swirling around the world it gets to the point where the boy has cried wolf one-to-many times and you don’t know who to believe.
So are things different now? Sure. And what is happening now is entirely predictable. I was banging my head into a table back in May because I knew this was going to happen. The best way to handle what is happening now in August was to not screw up the messaging back in May.
Its elementary banquet_bear chaos theory. Changes in the system can have devastating effect down the line.
Uh, I said “no more masks” because YOU said “no more masks” in your posts.
Entirely predictable? I wouldn’t say so. I wouldn’t have thought people were so god-damned dumb as to listen to Tik Tok videos and Facebook posts over common sense and their own doctors.
I would have predicted people would be lining up to get the vaccine, so we can end this. But people are morons. There are 70 million morons in this country at least, going by the last election results.
It’s hard for leaders of a country to say “Hey, idiots, you are causing this”
…well yeah. Because that’s the message the Whitehouse put out.
Completely predictable.
:: sigh ::
You seem to have completely missed the point of absolutely everything I spent considerable amounts of time writing here. But I knew that when I started typing, so that’s on me, I suppose.
Perhaps I have. I’ll re-read it again. I didn’t miss the fact that you said it was 6:15 in the morning and you had to go to sleep.
…black people and marginalised people who don’t have doctors and people who have been convinced by intense and specific targeted propaganda campagns are not “god-damned dumb”, are not morons, and not the enemy.
Covid is the big bad. But the grifters, the conmen, the corporations, the politicians, those are the people that should be held in contempt. They should be the target of your ire. Those are the people that are responsible for the mess you are in right now. They are the cause of it. You are holding the wrong people responsible.
You think you are telling Americans something we don’t know?
…I think I’m responding to the post that you wrote.
Did you intend to say something else? Because it seems pretty clear who you think are to blame.
The difference is that in almost every other situation, the marginalization is forced from without. In this case, it’s due to poor decision making on the part of unvaccinated people of whatever race/color/creed/religion they may be.
It’s hard to have much sympathy when the government and media have been harping on the free vaccine for going on six months now, and putting it in places where nearly anyone can get it without any real effort. At this point, if you’re not vaccinated and you’re at risk, marginalized, sick with COVID, whatever, it’s your own problem. I DGAF to be honest. I went and got vaccinated as soon as I possibly could (was in February, FWIW) because that was IMPORTANT. That’s how we beat this thing and get back to normal. Unfortunately there’s a large enough population of people who refuse or are too lazy to get vaccinated(I’m shocked that people actually searched out the J&J vaccine because it was only one shot, even though it’s less effective), and a smaller population of true morons who won’t wear masks either.
I have little sympathy for any of them. They had their chance, and the government made it as easy as humanly possible for them. If they choose not to do this, then it’s their problem and I’m going to say “Man, that’s just awful. Maybe they should have got vaccinated.”.
No, it’s the fault of the individual idiots who are choosing not to get vaccinated. There’s ample evidence that it works, and ample effort spent to get it out there. Individual agency and decision making are important here- if they choose to listen to a contemptible dickhead like Tucker Carlson, then they deserve what they get. I’m just completely unsympathetic to people who at this point, have deliberately chosen not to get vaccinated. It’s their choice, and THEIR PROBLEM.
Yeah, people who don’t get vaccinated.
…well, all I can say, is that:
- You’ve proven my point, completely and totally.
You have united against the unvaccinated.
This isn’t a winning strategy, IMHO.
- I wish you all the best for the rest of the pandemic.
Is your point that those that are unvaccinated during a global pandemic are to blame when the pandemic rages on?
if not, what is your point?
The enemy is COVID. The willfully unvaccinated have chosen to side with the enemy. They have made that choice. We have done everything possible to save them from their folly.
We’re trying our best.
But good luck with the whole “These people are engaging in behaviors that will prolong and worsen the pandemic and result in the needless hospitalizations and deaths of thousands if not millions, after being told repeatedly not to - but it’s your fault for being so mean to them” thing.
I never suggested this. At least, I never intended to suggest this. To paraphrase a famous someone “the plan is the thing”. The plan is what will cause VPs to be biased or not biased.
NZ has a laudable strategy for equity. As you bolded in your quote, if their implementation plan does not achieve the goals of the strategy, they will have failed to be equitable.
Unfortunately, the OP here is a conservative gotcha, and is attempting to compare a deeply racist policy that is coated with a thin respectable veneer with a largely neutral policy that they’ve smeared with racist innuendo.
It’s hard for me to get how you can be so wrong on this. Maybe it’s just a wording problem. If you want the government to work with marginalized communities prior to implementing vaccine passports; in an effort to ensure VPs are equitable for those communities… it’s the implementation plan that will be changed to accommodate their needs.
The people of those communities don’t interact with the strategy, they interact with the “day to day”, “boots on the ground”, “what document do I need in my hand and where do I get it” issues that come with the implementation. Hell, even Voter ID would be equitable if it was implemented to be that way.
…I’m sure you earnestly believe that.
But you can’t tell me that the two people I quoted believe that as well. I think I’ve called it exactly right. People in America aren’t treating Covid as the enemy. The unvaccinated are the enemy. Its just a statement of fact.
Except you haven’t.
Nobody ever expected 100% of people would get vaccinated. The original goal was 100 million doses within 100 days: that was met on March 19. The second goal, 200 million doses was reached by April 21st. The third goal, 70% of the adult population with one dose, was reached a few days ago on August 2nd. Cite.
These are mighty impressive numbers.And you did it in less than a year. Its about a month behind. But impressive. I’m assuming the next goal is to get it to 75%, then to 80%, then to go from there.
Before vaccination started, people were talking about 80% vaccinated were required to get to herd immunity. You are very close to that (with one jab.) With the rise of Delta many are saying that percentage is probably going to be higher.
I can see very easily that a sustained campaign over the next six months could get you to 80%. And if a year ago we knew that 80% of Americans were going to be vaccinated against Covid I’m sure most of us would have been happy with that.
The next step needs to be figuring out how to push those numbers beyond 80%. Some of those strategies may or may not involve making vaccination mandatory (depending on your job), or some form of vaccine passport (as long as marginalised communities are bought in as part of the process). Its not time to give up. You are so close to passing the threshold. You haven’t done everything you can. There is still more work to be done.
This is really unfair of you to say. And a complete misreading of my posts in this thread. I’ve made no objection to you “being mean.” You can be mean as much as you like. I have never tried to tone police.
But “being mean” is not the optimal strategy for fighting a global pandemic. It might make you feel better. But it isn’t going to make any difference to vaccination rates.
A few weeks ago in Australia after months of no community covid spread there were a couple of outbreaks in the states of Victoria and New South Wales.
The Victoria Government, learning from the experience of a breakaway outbreak last year, locked down hard and early. They ramped up testing, contact tracing, and isolation and all the other measures they had available and quickly bought the outbreak under control.
They didn’t take it as seriously in New South Wales. The Premier didn’t believe lockdowns worked. They were slow to eventually lockdown, and when they did lockdown the measures they took were “half-hearted.”
The daily cases have risen from 60 a day, to 100 a day, to 200 a day, and today there were 262 cases and 5 deaths.
And things are going to get worse.
They are at the stage of “blaming the unvaccinated” for dying in NSW, even though there literally aren’t enough vaccines in the country to get everyone vaccinated, and that some of those that did die weren’t eligible for the vaccine (yet) anyway.
Because here is the thing that I will always keep coming back to.
The pandemic isn’t over yet.
Vaccines are a tool that will eventually help bring the pandemic under control.
But they aren’t the only tool in the box.
Victoria unleashed all the tools they had to control the outbreak. New South Wales hasn’t.
And America still has all the tools in the box available to fight the pandemic. Contact tracing. Isolation. Masks. Social distancing. Genomic sequencing.
But almost all the eggs have gone into one basket now. Vaccination.
This is a failure of messaging, a failure to set expectations, a failure of strategy. America never really did contact tracing properly. Screwed up the mask messaging a few months ago. Have appalling rates of genomic sequencing. Not enough is being done to reach out to marginalised communities to get them vaccinated. Not enough is being done to combat the wave after wave of disinformation, to get the different Federal agencies singing from the same hymn book.
You are free to be mean to the unvaccinated all you like. But being mean isn’t going to make a difference.
And stop pretending you’ve done “everything you could.” Because you haven’t.
The pandemic isn’t going to be over any time soon. You might be able to just walk down the road to get a vaccine in America, but most of the rest of the world are months, even years away from getting to that point. Change your expectations.
…but I’ve already addressed and dismissed that part of the OP. It was the first thing I did. Outside that context, concerns about vaccine passports are still valid.
I don’t really think I’ve got this wrong.
Can I point you back to the Matt Damon story? I think it will add a bit more context.
Damon and Affleck had a series called “Project Greenlight”, a documentary/reality show that gave first time filmmakers the opportunity to direct a feature film. It ran 4 seasons.
In the final season Effie T. Brown, a black film and television producer was bought onto the show as Line Producer. And during a debate about which of the young flimmakers would be best to direct the film (which at the time was about a black woman sex worker) Effie argued:
Damon responded:
Effie’s argument: stories about marginalized people are more authentic and should be told by marginalized people.
Damon’s argument: what happens behind the scenes doesn’t matter. What’s important is that we cast black people.
Damon won and his director got to make the movie. (The movie that got made, The Leisure Class, ultimately scored 0% on Rotten Tomatoes and was the Directors first and last film.)
Here is what happens when you develop a strategy independent of the community it’s targeting, when you only bring them in when it’s time to implement that strategy.
You end up with a movie with a tomato rating of 0%. You are just “casting black people” when you really should be bringing on a black production team.
Black Panther would have been a completely different movie if it had been directed by Quentin Tarantino. It would have completely missed its target audience.
And a strategy developed by outsiders to a community is most probably going to miss the mark as well. And for evidence of this, I’ll just point to :: everything that has happened in American history ::
Its why I talked about “baking it into the process.” Te Tiriti o Waitangi is our founding document, and the Crown’s commitment to that can be found at every level, government wide. In developing our Covid strategy the Ministry of Health talks about:
They are engaged with the process. They aren’t only involved in the implementation stage; they are an integral part of developing the strategy.
So my question to you would be: why not bring in people from the community to help develop strategy? Why only concern for what happens at the end of the process, the “day to day”, the “boots on the ground?” Don’t you feel that you would end up with a strategy that might miss the mark?
I’m not saying we shouldn’t. It’s rather more complex here than in other places, but it’s not a bad idea. Our problem right now is that for the first year of this pandemic we had the single worst person imaginable “in charge” of our country’s response. That man poisoned the well, helped culture an anti-science, anti-response bias that continues to this day.
It still doesn’t change the fact that you’re basically supposing that vaccine passports will be biased, without even so much as indicating how it’s possible for them to be biased, and what the impact would be if they are.