Reality check: Proof-of-vax passports have been a thing for generations--Yellow Fever for instance..

[Hekate]

Last edited Sun May 16, 2021, 02:59 AM - Edit history (1)

You already know this, I think. If you or a friend has traveled overseas, there's a slew of vaccinations required for many regions of the planet, and if they aren’t required by this country, your tour company likely will want proof.

Took me only a little while to find this, but it sums it up pretty well:

https://www.insider.com/proof-of-vaccination-requirements-passports-travel-world-health-yellow-fever-2021-4

Vaccine passports are a hot-button issue, but travelers already need vaccines to enter certain countries around the world
The concept of making COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for travel has prompted heated debate in recent weeks.

Amid the debate, some in the medical community have pointed out that requiring proof of vaccination for travel is not a new concept.
For years, select countries in Africa and South America have required visitors to be vaccinated against yellow fever.
Yellow fever is a mosquito-borne viral disease present in tropical and subtropical areas of Africa and South America. Symptoms can range from fever and body aches to severe liver disease with bleeding and jaundiced skin, according to the CDC.

Laws surrounding proof of vaccination requirements are governed by the World Health Organization's International Health Regulations, which were established in 1951 and renamed in 1969. The regulations are legally binding for 169 countries.
Under these rules, yellow fever is the only disease for which countries can require vaccination in the form of a WHO-issued yellow card.

If a country is experiencing an outbreak of another disease, WHO may recommend that a country ask travelers to provide proof of vaccination. Currently, the organization recommends that Pakistan and Afghanistan ask adult visitors who haven't been vaccinated against polio since childhood to receive a single adult dose of the vaccine.

And while the US government says it won't introduce federally mandated vaccine passports, that doesn't mean that businesses — including restaurants, gyms, sports stadiums, and other venues — won't require documentation to prove someone has been vaccinated against COVID-19. It also may become required for international travel.

[elleng]

1. Right, but people forget, and we behave as if they'd never existed.

(Childhood inoculations, too.)

[Hekate]

6. Yes, and it has started to drive me a bit crazy

It’s happening even here, on occasion

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Yep, have my WHO yellow card stuck in with my passport

[Nasruddin]

14. Origin of yellow card

I am not sure about this, but I have the recollection that one of the reasons for the yellow card and proving you had been vaccinated was to make sure you didn't import yellow fever to the host country (or export it).

YF is native to East Africa I think. But it came to be a problem elsewhere in Africa & in the Americas (including Philadelphia at one point) due to trade (ahem).

[Warpy]

3. Right, and showing a smallpox vax scar before you could get near a school.

Covid is a lot less lethal than smallpox, thank goodness, but there is plenty of precedent.

[dhol82]

4. Hell, I've had to have many of these.

Last one was about three years ago when I needed one of those little yellow booklets for a polio vaccination. Needed a booster and an official signature in the book.
It was for getting back into China after a trip to Pakistan.

[Maraya1969]

5. I am very happy for vaccine passports. I want to travel and I want to travel

with people who have been vaccinated. I want to do things with others who have been vaccinated. This is what we have been waiting for for over a year!

[Hekate]

7. I hope to travel again some day, if only across this country to see siblings...

One of my brothers died last July, and we 3 remaining siblings will all have to take airplanes to be together for a memorial service in Oregon, where he lived for 50 years. I know some people here despise airplane travel on general principles, but when those you love are a continent away, get real.

I so want to see them and touch them and share some drinks and laughs about our shared memories. So, fingers crossed.

[Martin68]

8. My Dad was a Foreign Service Officer working for the State Department in US embassies overseas from

1954 to 1970. I carried a vaccination record to every country we lived in, documenting the vaccinations I had received. It was a fact of life in overseas travel. What changed? Why is there a stigma attached to documenting the vaccinations you have received?

[turbinetree]

10. Exactly.......

When we went over seas with our family where we got stationed and we had to get "all" of the required shots and we had to prove we got them....and then coming back into the states we had to show we got them when we went school...

[monkeyman1]

15. why need proof of id to cash a check then ?

[LeftInTX]

20. "Vaccine passport" is about interstate or intrastate events, not international

It's a word cooked up by those on the right to make it sound like "passports" will be required to travel around within the US by US citizens.

It isn't about international passports.

It's like the term, "cancel culture"....

[BobTheSubgenius]

21. That's exactly it.

They are trying to gin up scary images of post-war Russia and its "internal travel documents."

[monkeyman1]

9. what the f&ck is the big deal ! i spent 3 yrs in the damn jungles & was happy to vaccinated !

[BobTheSubgenius]

11. What an onerous concept! A means of verifying that you're probably healthy.

Who could live under tyranny like that?

[Jon King]

12. Vaccine passports makes zero sense.

For goodness sakes, just get vaccinated and move on with your own life. Who the heck cares what others do? Enough already, get vaccinated, wear a mask to prevent flu if you want to.

But enough with this silliness. The pandemic is over for the vaccinated. The science is what it is. Let the rest do what they want. If they want to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, whatever. If they want to not get the vaccine, whatever. My family is vaccinated, we are moving ahead with life.

I mean we live in a country where 2/3rd of adults are obese. That kills more than the virus will going forward now that folks are vaccinated..

[Nasruddin]

13. Not that simple

Large numbers of willingly unvaccinated people serve as a reservoir for the virus. Continued infections with their non-stop enormous numbers of mutations make it possible for any number of things to happen -
a variant that escapes detection by current antivirals / vaccines & infects you
a variant that's much more infectious than the current virus
a variant that jumps to a domestic animal and wipes them out

I'm not going to catch obesity from you. If you don't wear a helmet & crash your bike I'm not even going to get a headache.
Just not a good analogy.

The vaccinations are more like welding gloves. You're not going to get burned easily while wearing them while welding, but juggling red hot pieces of iron is not going to work out.

[Shrek]

18. At first I read it as "The vaccinations are more like wedding gloves"

And I sat here thinking "where is this going?"

[Voltaire2]

17. No shit.

[LeftInTX]

19. I think people are calling "mandatory vaccines" within the US "vaccine passports"

For instance, I had to show my vaccination record to enter the Texas Capitol or take a Covid test before I could enter. This is what they are referring to a "vaccine passports". The cray-cray groups imagines "government control" via vaccines. This group really doesn't care about international travel. But hey, they are the same group that insists we have "voting passports".

In Texas, the governor came out against "vaccine passports", however international travel is not part of state government.

My family was stationed in Japan when I was a kid and we were subject to a slew of vaccines that are not required in the US. (I'm glad I was too young to know there difference..LOL) I also picked up the names of diseases that lots of kids in the US would not have in their vocabulary until high school.