IMO, it doesn't seem appropriate to set up a global identification system by leveraging the crisis, but I don't know what the alternatives would look like.

Not setting up a global id system? I do not see why do we need one in the first place?

The world is full of deadly deseases anyway, so endangered people allways have to look out and vaccines allmost never guarantee 100% immunity.

this is such an all-or-nothing response.

The combination of rapid spread and not negligible mortality makes covid19 a much higher threat globally than most other diseases, as has been shown repeatedly. Even a lot of not-at-risk individuals will die from it. We really shouldn't be arguing over these facts anymore. and in fact, we're still lucky. nothing guarantees that we might not have a worse infection in the future that is as contagious but much deadlier (think of something like Ebola but much more contagious).

if we can somehow diminish the threat, it's worth thinking about it. it might be that the tradeoffs are not worth it (locking everyone up for two years for example wouldn't qualify), but it's still worth thinking about options. that includes imperfect options like a vaccine.

> We really shouldn't be arguing over these facts anymore.

Well actual death tolls for the US would be around 60,000 which is comparable of number of new suicides due to lockdowns.

you do understand what it means to be at the beginning of an exponential curve, right? this is not going to grow linearly, if this is not contained somehow, you could be looking at millions of deaths in the US alone.

again, all these numbers have been debated so many times before.

> you could be looking at millions of deaths in the US alone

That's not true. Very worst case scenario will be 160,000 deaths based on our last data. But around 60,000 is more probable even we go out of lockdown right now.

Ref: https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

notice the preceding clause in the sentence you quoted, "if not contained somehow".

The numbers you cite all assume social distancing measures, it says so at the very top (and also the forecast only goes to the end of August, there is no guarantee that the virus doesn't come back in winter or so, we saw this with the Spanish flu).

do you understand that exponential curves stem from unbound models?

sigmoids tend to reflect nature more realistically.

of course, no growth is truly exponential forever, but a sigmoid model is still basically exponential in its initial stage and as long as there is no big saturation factor (i.e. lots of herd immunity), the limiting factor is negligible.

so, as long as herd immunity is not high, the curve is approximately exponential.

" that includes imperfect options like a vaccine."

A vaccine is not an imperfect option. It is our standard way of defeating diseases. Only problem here is, there is none ready, but several on its way. This is the only reason why covid19 is a higher threat and not really because of the disease itself. Neither our medical system, nor our immune system is prepared for it.

So we need a vaccine, for the risk groups, yes. But why do we need to give up on privacy and freedom for it, I do not really understand.

Bill Gates strikes me as someone who will be a villian to society as he ages. Bill Gates lacks the empathy necessary to design solutions with people in mind. The threat comes from the power he unleshes through his charity foundation.

Things like ID2020 will be expanded. The forced vaccination program through excluding participation in society hasn't started yet. Chances are your kid will not be allowed in school without one at some point.

>Bill Gates strikes me as someone who will be a villian to society as he ages.

To a lot of people who were in tech in the '90s, he was also a villain to society when he was younger.

He was but really he had more of a commercial mindset that was against level playing fields and against free software. It didn't make him evil but not a role model either. Now that his imagine has changed and he is playing with medicine buying off the news he is more dangerous to everyone.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bill-gates-foundat...

That would be more fair if the same people who don't get the vaccine actively support the vaccine mandate. From my experience this is not true. They simply do not trust institution. Their motive is not free loading herd immunity and avoiding the hassle of doing it themselves.

You can be a freeloader without thinking you're a freeloader, though.

the whole CDC mask recommendation fiasco only adds fuel to the fire here. how do you explain to these people "yes, the CDC just mislead you, but you should really trust the vaccine recommendation"?

No one even came close to saying that.

I had measles, didn't die from it. I also had several kinds of flu, didn't die from them either. I almost died in a climbing accident, and from drinking way too much alcohol in my teens.

Plenty of lives are destroyed by side effects from vaccines, same thing with the current lock down, where do you draw the line?

Blindly trusting science is about as smart as blindly trusting the catholic church, the issue was always blind trust.

Big pharma has proven over and over and over again that the only thing they care about is profit; and given enough money, anything can be bought in this society.

I know it's uncomfortable to question authority, but it's also a responsibility.

Glad you didn't die of measles. Unfortunately other people did.

Please cite evidence of the lives destroyed by administering vaccines.

I didn't claim that a lockdown has no adverse effect, quite the contrary. That's why a vaccine (which we don't have, sadly), of course only if it's safe and effective (which is what we generally test for, hence why it takes so long), would help: it would immunise us and we could stop the epidemic at a much lower cost to society than with lockdown.

"Blindly trusting science" is not a thing; science is all about facts and evidence, not about trust.

Please refrain from ad hominem.

There's plenty of evidence out there, and plenty of motivation to shoot down any attempt at objective research. Which is where your brain and your responsibility to use it enter the picture.

Of course it's about trust, science has been wrong about many things along the way, because of ignorance and lately to an increasing extent because of money.

Please refrain from putting words in people's mouth to hide your ignorance.

science is about getting better models of reality. facts are mostly a political artifact.

We already have driver licenses. It wouldn't be too difficult to expand to driver license plus immunity card.

I don't know if ID2020 is being proposed as compulsory, but one is not required to obtain a driver's license, or any other form of state issued ID, in the US. If asked to present ID by an officer of the law, merely giving your full name and birth date is sufficient.

You don’t have to answer even to that if there is no probable cause.

> one is not required to obtain a driver's license, or any other form of state issued ID, in the US

Practically, one is required to obtain an ID to do many common activities. Being able to theoretically opt-out of these systems is a fiction that forms a cornerstone of their justification.

Well, what is unique is that this is a tattoo microchip, rather than a card

Where does the website say this? It is quite vague about implementation details, at least from what I can find.

Closest I could find was a conspiracy theory linking a separate study into using quantum dots to record vaccination. https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/11/523/eaay7162

It is not a microchip, but not a conspiracy theory either:

http://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218

"Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Koch Institute "

Thankfully this won't fly in Germany, because the Nazis tattooed concentration camp victims with numbers. Not sure about the U.S. though.

This is exactly the kind of thing the lunatic militias in the 90s were terrified about. Those people are still around, and if you try to give them 'the mark of the beast', for better or worse, there will be blood.

But it is an invisible, beneath the skin imprint, and for a good reason to help with large scale vaccination. And without such vaccination, especially in the case of covid-19, millions could die. Who would argue with such a beneficial and convenient approach?

However, for some reason ID2020 is distancing themselves from this quantum dot approach.

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/conspiracy-theory-misinter...

"The Gates Foundation has advocated for expanded testing and has funded vaccine research, but neither of those involves implanted microchips."

Technically true. Quantum dots aren't exactly microchips.

Or driving licence + vaccinations + eligibility to vote

>The conspiracy theory aspect is whatever one wants to expound on from there...

Let me guess... Mark of the Beast, rise of the Antichrist, New World Order, FEMA death camps, blah blah blah. Same stuff, different decade.

Wrong. Money, power & control. If you limit what one can do if they don't have a vaccine, you create an artificial demand for the vaccine, thus driving profits through the roof.

Basic economics there.

I won't be getting my "ID" card if they ever make one.

What if it’s a non profit who use Western profits to subsidise third world efforts? This already happens in other areas of medicine, far more so in the for profit sector. Limit what one can do without a visa, up the artificial demand to useful levels of herd immunity, and use the profits to fund doing the same in Africa.

Except the fewer people who get (or can afford) the vaccine, the weaker herd immunity becomes, and the more likely a future outbreak might lead to another shutdown of the economy, to say nothing of the profits from a vaccine you might only need to take once per year likely not offsetting the losses from sick workers who can't be vaccinated throughout that year.

The ROI for that scheme seems terrible, but maybe I just don't understand basic economics well enough. It seems obvious to me that they could make more money charging less for the vaccine and more to companies and government for implementation and data infrastructure.

So you'll take the tattoo microchip? That's what ID2020 is...