> The whole principle that you need to prove vaccination to be let into a country is not really new.

Exactly. Necessary and recommended vaccinations are one of the first things to check when planning a trip to destinations in Africa, South East Asia etc.

In many countries they don't accept kids to nursery without up to date vacinnation card.

This is true in the U.S. as well [0]. Some states allow for religious, philosophical, or medical exemptions; these exceptions are similar to the systems implemented in the Netherlands (religious [1]), Australia (philosophical [2]) or Germany (medical [1]).

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination_policy_in_the_Unit...

[1]: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057/s41271-019-001...

[2]: https://www.sabin.org/sites/sabin.org/files/restricted/Salmo...

They also don’t allow you to collect welfare unless you and your kids have received your vaccinations (Australia).

I have travelled South East Asia for several years and never been asked to show any proof.

There are people in the travel community who oppose restrictions, sometimes hyperbolically so. For the last year, travel forums have been full of posts by people who intentionally chose destinations because not only would those country let them in, but mask-wearing and distancing wasn't really enforced there.

With regard to need to prove vaccination, note that the WHO yellow-fever certificate was originally good for 10 years, and recently the WHO announced that it should be good for life. COVID passports are rather different in that they are passed on a QR code, so your certificate could be deemed invalid by your country’s authorities at any time. If you are traveling when that happens, they you might suddenly have to search for whatever new booster vaccine is required for onward travel, which might be a challenge if you are in the developing world.

I am in that category. Few months ago I went to Egypt because they do a cheap PCR tests on the border and masks aren't really required there. For my next trip in few months, unless things relax, I am planning to go either to Zanzibar or Mexico. I don't want to bother with these apps, getting certifications, tests, quarantines.

I highly recommend Mexico. Beautiful, affordable, friendly people (especially if you make an effort to speak at least a tiny bit of the language)

I have my Covid shots entered into the WHO yellow vaccination passport and assume that's good enough for the time being until a specific "QR code passport" is released.

edited to add: Why should a civilized country just revoke certification once you're fully vaccinated?

>Why should a civilized country just revoke certification once you're fully vaccinated?

My assumption was that the revocation facility was there to support the standard PKI revocation use cases.

For instance: subsequent discovery of errors in the database that resulted in issuance of the certificate (we discovered you didn't actually get your second shot), loss of control of a signing key, etc.

Not to get get too conspiratorial, but it looks like the Sinovac vaccine is less effective. As new variants come out, the requirement may not be a Covid vaccine, but a specific Covid vaccine. And that data might come out after you already have your shot so requirements for entry could change real time.

Same here. I have had to present my Yellow Card before to enter countries, and I will do the same for COVID immunizations.

To be fair not everyone would count Belarus among civilised countries.

Belarus would not generally be considered civilized in the sense you're probably thinking of; it's essentially a rogue state.

I think the keyword is "civilized country".

When the new apps and digital certificates were announced, being able to revoke certification at any time was touted as one of their major advantages over traditional vaccine certificates. This way, if a new variant arises that preexisting vaccines don’t protect against, or if a state wants to enforce annual booster shots, they can just invalidate older certificates by updating the database entry to which the QR code points.

Neither new variants and boosters are reasons for revokation as both are better served by information about the vaccine administered and a timestamp.

if there is a new vaccine required or some follow up procedure or whatever it would make more sense to hand out a new certificate that validates this fact instead of revoking the old one that is actually still perfectly able to validate your previous actions. In fact it might be very beneficial to keep them around to give approval to another step like lets say you will only get that booster shot after you are able to present validation of your vaccination or similar... invalidating these certificates by giving them a date until they are valid is very easy without explicitly revoking certificates.

At least here around I never read that argument. Given that it's initially valid for only 6 month I don't think that's really an issue.

> I'd wager that the average American anti Covid fanatic (the sort: Masks are fascism! It's like what the nazis did with the jews!) is not really the kind of person travelling the world.

I think this may vary by destination. I have no data (not sure if such data exists) but, anecdotally, living in Ireland, I get the impression that many do travel here at least.

It may be that different destinations hold different draws (& I'm told the Irish-American community has diverged significantly in political leanings compared to Ireland/Europe)

I would love to see a fight between anti and pro covid fanatics.

That would seem like it's a stereotype for a reason, but at the beginning of all this mess, we had plenty of tourists (Ireland) who .. weren't malicious about it, they just ran on the assumption that restrictions were for everyone else. Like they're special, and obviously it's okay for them to bend the rules, as long as everyone else isn't.

I've read of plenty of people visiting Iceland recently, where it's essentially test at the border then shelter in place until you get your results. And people quite happily listing off the spots they visited on their way to their hotel to shelter in place for the evening. And to be frank, Iceland does seem to be as accommodating as possible while understandably protective of their near-zero rates. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort to reciprocate by acting as a guest should.

I don't want to sound overly critical, but it's not just the rabid fanatics. I do get the impression plenty of perfectly reasonable American tourists believe they're a special case.

As someone who has my yellow vaccine passport from the WHO because I travel to South America, I disagree with this sentiment. I view this move by the EU more akin to TSA than the yellow fever vaccine. I believe it will turn into strictly an annoyance to travelers. The premise of TSA was straightforward response to a bad thing that occurred and turned into a useless beast and these programs appear to have the same fingerprints. For example, what is different now than before when we didn't require proof of seasonal flu shot (or any vaccine for that matter)? Are we admitting this was a mistake? If so, then why just COVID? Add MMR, DTaP, and seasonal flu to the list. Is this a temporary program until COVID-19 is sufficiently vaccinated against? If so, why is this not the first thing mentioned? What about new variants of the disease? Will we need booster shots every year? If so, then we've already significantly diverged from the yellow fever program. If this is only COVID-19, then why even bother with the program? Inevitably, I believe the program will turn into TSA and have scope creep and will never get abolished. They will continue explaining the need for their existence to keep their jobs at the detriment to only travelers. The only way I could get behind any such program is a clear end date written into law.

MMR TDaP smallpox polio vaccines have been so successful that people don’t worry about these fearsome diseases. An ironic victim of their own success.

> The whole principle that you need to prove vaccination to be let into a country is not really new.

Requiring this for experimental and not-yet-approved vaccines is new. (The COVID vaccines only have Emergency Use Authorizations.)

> That's certainly a possibility if safety really is a concern. But I'd wager that the average American anti Covid fanatic (the sort: Masks are fascism! It's like what the nazis did with the jews!) is not really the kind of person travelling the world.

That is incredibly mean-spirited. And exactly what I have come to expect.

I am fully vaccinated: measles, rubella, all the rest.

I will not get the COVID shot.

I never get the annual flu shot, either. I am skeptical of a highly experimental new treatment for a disease that isn't all that lethal.

My body, my choice. If I die, that's my problem.

You go ahead and get the shot. Your body, your choice. If you "trust the science", it'll give you immunity, and you don't need to worry about me at all.

My attitude is mainstream. You just never listen to it, because you'd probably prefer that CNN or the NYT "interpret" it for you.

"If I die, that's my problem." — if it were that easy, I'd be fully on board with you. I am not a fan of being told what I should be doing. In a society (like they say, no man is an island), however, it's not always that clear cut. Once you're infected, the disease does not only affect you and your body. You pass it on to others, you may have an unexpected reaction (which can now be said with quite some certainty, is at the very last the same or worse than whatever the vaccine would do to you) and that reaction means you may use up unexpected resources provided by society. If you live on a farm out in the desert all by yourself, don't need a doctor or hospital, and end up dying or being fine without other people affected, then sure, you do you. That I fully support.

Seeing you post here in HackerNews, I'd guess you'd actually enjoy reading up (and are qualified to understand) on mRNA technology, including the Pfizer "disassembly" for it on GitHub.

In terms of your attitude being mainstream, that'll depend on how many people end up getting the vaccine. That sort of thing tends to change quickly (in both ways).

> You pass it on to others

Those "others" have spent the past five years screaming at me and threatening me.

I stopped caring about or listening to them a long time ago.

> My attitude is mainstream.

> Those "others" have spent the past five years screaming at me and threatening me.

So... you first claim that the mainstream view is yours, and that you won't be vaccinated so assumedly the mainstream won't (even though by the numbers that's clearly not true as 62% of adults already have one shot[1] and that number is sure to continue to grow), but then you claim that the "others" you don't care are the people that apparently don't share your view and you're OK with threatening them. This doesn't make a lot of sense given that the "mainstream" who shares your view will not be vaccinating so those will be the people your actions threaten, not the "others" who have been threatening you and don't share your views, as they will be vaccinated.

Your argument and beliefs aren't making a lot of sense, outside of what appears to be a desire to be in the popular in-group while also simultaneously being contrarian.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/covid-19-vaccine...

> If you "trust the science", it'll give you immunity, and you don't need to worry about me at all.

Me getting vaccinated protects more than just me. It protects, for example, those who cannot get vaccinated by limiting the spread of a disease. Your perspective could be (perhaps slightly unfairly) summarized as 'your child has leukemia and caught a cold from me, well that's THEIR problem not mine'

I do not understand, and refuse to accept, that absurdist shift towards individualism at the expense of all others. It makes no sense, it is often willfully blind to the realities of day to day interaction...and its just mean spirited.

Watching the anti-COVID vaccine folks has helped me realize this isn't about medicine or science or understanding...its about selfishness.

> Watching the anti-COVID vaccine folks has helped me realize this isn't about medicine or science or understanding...its about selfishness.

It really is about science because the vaccines have not been approved for general use yet. All they have is an Emergency Use Authorization.

Edit: Also, we don't know the long-term effects of these vaccines. Those could be far worse than the virus.

For people who are not vulnerable, they shouldn't have to get a vaccine. For people who are, well, we have grocery delivery services. And masks (if they work). And vaccines (if they can get them).

If we lose liberty, then you can bet that we will lose our ability to choose whether to get experimental medical treatments or not. Trust me, you don't want to go down that road.

Do you have an example of said side effects your concerned about? As far as I'm aware most of the vaccine side effects should have popped up by now, and if you're talking long term then we can't possibly know the side effects of any medication because you can always move out the goalpost another decade.

The liberty being discussed here is to go to another country - that's never been an unrestrained freedom you had and up for that other nation to decide, so I don't know why you're concerned about a non-existent liberty.

Long-term side effects don't pop up right away, so no, I can't say what side effects I am worried about. However, I think a decade is about the right amount of time to watch.

I am not talking about a non-existent liberty. I am talking about "my body, my choice." If we decide that taking an experimental vaccine should be necessary for free and unrestricted travel across borders, what's to stop governments from implementing the same thing domestically? Or requiring vaccines to take part in the economy? We already see moves that direction, so I am not talking about a non-existent liberty.

> Long-term side effects don't pop up right away, so no, I can't say what side effects I am worried about. However, I think a decade is about the right amount of time to watch.

So we can expect in 2031 you'll get vaccinated?

> If we decide that taking an experimental vaccine should be necessary for free and unrestricted travel across borders, what's to stop governments from implementing the same thing domestically?

Regarding restriction your movement, as GP states countries have had rules for vaccination during travel for a long time. You have no right to visit another country and countries are free to restrict your freedom of movement within their laws. That's not a liberty you possess, and you're making up scenarios to maximize your potential persecution. Unless that's seriously in discussion, which it's not, it's being dramatic for drama's sake.

I am talking about domestic travel, not international.

During the hysteria, I believe either New York or Rhode Island restricted travel across those state borders, despite such restrictions being explicitly prohibited by the Constitution.

So I am not making up a scenario.

Also, by 2031 (if not already), COVID will be endemic. So no, I probably won't take the vaccine. But taking the vaccine at my age was not a good idea anyway (in my opinion).

Was anyone else talking about domestic travel?

> Also, by 2031 (if not already), COVID will be endemic. So no, I probably won't take the vaccine. But taking the vaccine at my age was not a good idea anyway (in my opinion).

I don't know what age you are, but you must not be talking statistically.

> Was anyone else talking about domestic travel?

No, no one else was talking about domestic travel, but I was. Because it's important to me, and because I can see how it will be lost easily. And it is a liberty that I have.

Also, what about being shut out of the economy? No one was talking about that either, but it's already happening, and I also don't want to lose that.

> I don't know what age you are, but you must not be talking statistically.

I am at an age where I could have kids. There is very little evidence that the vaccines do not affect the ability to have kids. So no, I am not talking statistically, but if I was, 99.97% of the people who get COVID in my age group do just fine. So statistically, the virus isn't very dangerous to me, while the vaccines are unknown. I'll go with the devil I know, thank you very much.

Also, your questions show that you have no good faith interest in engaging in healthy debate and instead wish to make me look bad. So this will be my last message to you. You can have the last word if you want.

> There is very little evidence that the vaccines do not affect the ability to have kids.

That's fine, my last word is simple - you're not assuming the null hypothesis with this. You're creating a list of bad things, for which you have no evidence, and assuming they could be true. In that case it could also very well be the case that somehow it causes benefits in fertility or some other effects. And it seems foolish to worry about the unobserved effects of the vaccine, especially given the huge sample size we currently have, and especially when there is currently research being done, based upon actual observations and not just unfounded conjecture, that COVID may be able to affect fertility.

I guess we're not worried about the long term effect of the virus either? Planning on avoiding getting infected for the next 10y so that we can learn more about it as well?

Especially ironic if it ends up that the virus was escaped from a lab.

There is a chance that I will not get the virus at all.

To quote another thing you said:

> Also, by 2031 (if not already), COVID will be endemic.

Still a chance that I won't get it. Endemic also means that it's constantly mutating, like the flu. I may never get the current strain of COVID-19.

Yeah, but the next strain could be even worse. You seem comfortable playing the odds if you can be passive while doing it instead of making the active choice of getting a vaccination, even if the odds of the worse thing happening is many orders of magnitude greater.

That's because of the Precautionary Principle. Also, as viruses mutate, they tend to get less dangerous.

'it really is about the science'

so what is your education level regarding interpreting vaccine trials data?

it really is about the liberty...which really is about the selfishness...I may disagree with your perspective but my bigger problem is that you won't own it.

There is no data about long term effects, so my education doesn't matter.

Also, focusing on liberty is not selfish. It is a false dichotomy that liberty leads to less safety. In fact, loss of liberty means the loss of different kinds of safety than the virus takes away.

Right now, in the US, we have the safety that the government is not just going to haul us away to reeducation camps if we hold opinions that go against the official narrative. Lose liberty, and that safety is gone.

I focus on liberty because I don't want my posterity, or yours, or anyone's, living in a dystopian dictatorship where they fear for their lives every day.

If you call me selfish because of that, I'll accept that label because you just made it meaningless.

Oh, and I have a college education with statistics and a bit of experience in chemistry research.

Mainstream: I agree. We are reasonable, independent-minded Americans who are rightly skeptical of a highly experimental new..

Ohio couples vaccine jabs with a lottery

Mainstream: Hot damn I like them odds!

Public health workers have known for a long time that low health literacy is a huge problem. People will keep getting into preventable accidents and abusing drugs. All you can do is to make the facts and medical tools widely available to those who want to use them.

> I'd wager that the average American anti Covid fanatic (the sort: Masks are fascism! It's like what the nazis did with the jews!) is not really the kind of person travelling the world.

You'd be wrong.

I've received more vaccines than 99.99% of the people you meet. I visit the doctor and get every jab that's recommended before every international trip (along with documentation for my prescriptions in case I'm questioned about them at a border,) but I will not receive any of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines until they are adequately tested. Adequate testing takes about a decade. I'm not really concerned about their efficacy, but anyone who tells you that their long-term safety is already established is lying to you.

Not sure why you are downvoted.

Health officials in US have done a phenomenal job showing how incompetent they were during this crisis. From initial downplay, then the mask fiasco, then trying to covering up the lab leak hypothesis, and of course politicizing the vaccine release timeline, they have blood on their hands. Then to say we need to blindly trust them on what they are saying on safety profile of the vaccine, its completely crazy. And through it all they never said we are sorry.

I will never trust US Health Authorities anymore. Period.

Maybe because saying "Adequate testing takes about a decade" is kinda BS - maybe in poster's opinion that's what "adequate" means. Realistically, the vaccine just has to be safer than getting Covid and it's long-term effects. Because we've seen in most Western nations that not getting Covid doesn't work in general.

> I will never trust US Health Authorities anymore

It's a shame some of their mistakes have eroded trust, and for what it's worth, I think easing masking requirements for vaccinated people was rash. But:

> then trying to covering up the lab leak hypothesis, and of course politicizing the vaccine release timeline, they have blood on their hands.

Come on. With all due respect, the lab leak hypothesis does not change the fact Covid exists now and we all have to deal with it, and I'm not even sure what "politicizing the vaccine release timeline" even means, or how a vaccine rollout better than Europe (so far) means they have blood on their hands. There is for sure some politics involved, which can be seen between the different approaches between the administrations. But that just points to factors outside health officials.

So what about other countries then? Are they equally untrustworthy? And with all the vaccinations given so far, the safety profile of some vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech) seems very good (compared to AZ, which is still not bad). At this point, data exists on the short term effects and blind trust is not necessary. On the long term, who knows? But you'd be in the same boat as millions of other people if there were wide-spread effects. If not, then it'd be like cancer or car accidents. Shit does sometimes happen, and often it's out of our control.

If we don't know the long-term effects of the vaccines, we don't know if they are actually better than COVID and its long-term effects.

Don't forget Covid/SARS-Cov-2 is only 6 months older than the vaccines: Nov-2019 vs Apr-2020.

Every bit of data that we have today about the safety profile of the vaccines vs Covid indicates that for the majority of people vaccines are orders of magnitude (think 100-10000x) safer than Covid.

Even when they aren't, e.g. children or AZ & young women, we are talking about super small risks similar to an average car ride.

People consider risk emotionally. A Facebook post claiming their uncle’s roommate’s sister died of a JNJ blot clot (1 in a million) gets more eyeballs than yesterday’s hundreds of COVID-19 fatalities (hundreds of times the risk!)

No, there are data that says that the vaccines may be the same as COVID, or worse because the virus is not that dangerous for young people.

that's true, but also not useful if you're dead.

luckily, there are a few vaccines to choose from, and we do understand how the vaccines work in general. but if you don't trust mRNA vaccines, adenovirus vaccines are very well understood.

I’m not a betting man but a one in a million chance of dying of a Jannsen shot looks good in comparison with COVID-19’s 300 per million(1). Lightning is about 0.3 million. Driving or riding a car is 100 per million.

(1)Death rate much higher in hotspots after hospitals are overwhelmed.

I'm not a betting man, but it looks like the chance of dying from the shot might actually be higher than 1 in a million. And we don't yet know how high it is, nor will we, I suspect.

> With all due respect, the lab leak hypothesis does not change the fact Covid exists now

It would though, in Jan 2020. When it was almost equivalent to xenophobia. When everyone was told travel was no biggie. And everyone should hang in NYC because the preparedness is so high. What does it say about those experts who espoused these bs? I remember Anthony Fauci publicly saying in news conference there is no way this is a lab leak and it has to be a natural virus. If a year later now it seems the were not being honest to public (intentionally or not), what makes you think a year from now they won't reverse course on vaccine?

> how a vaccine rollout better than Europe (so far) means they have blood on their hands.

You don't think US wouldn't have a better response if this was not an election year in 2020? I remember the tone around vaccine suddenly changing post election from "I will use it when Drs say it is safe" to "if you don't take vaccine you are a bigot".

> the safety profile of some vaccines (Pfizer/BioNTech) seems very good (compared to AZ, which is still not bad)

Sure "seems good", it is like saying safety profile of this code I am going to be using in production that will be tested on billions of people "seems fine" so let's go ahead and if anything happens we will be on the "same boat as millions of other people" as you said.

My hypothesis around this is this - countries that have been successful the most in controlling the virus i.e. China have the lowest vaccination number too. So what makes you think we are smarter than them when we did an awful job managing the virus?

> Shit does sometimes happen, and often it's out of our control.

This is the point though. Shit happened and it was within our control. There were multiple mis-steps from health officials and media from the get go with outright downplay to being completely wrong (about masks and other things) and politicizing. And there were no recourse. No introspection. No apologies. The NYC health commissioner who said their preparedness was very high is still there. No one had any accountability.

Hell there are still 700+ people dying in US everyday, do you hear those CNN panelists outraged about those deaths? No, we have moved on. It's all about channeling the narrative. The political war has been won and that''s all that mattered in an election year. People's lives were secondary.

And we still are supposed to trust blindly the same group of people?

Well, don't take it from me. Take it from Hopkins:

> A typical vaccine development timeline takes 5 to 10 years, and sometimes longer

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/vaccines/timeline

Or how about from New York State?

> The creation of a vaccine involves scientists and medical experts from around the world, and it usually requires 10 to 15 years of research

https://www.health.ny.gov/prevention/immunization/vaccine_sa...

Or the World Economic Forum?

> In total, a vaccine can take more than 10 years to fully develop

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/vaccine-development-b...

mRNA technology doesn't eliminate the need for lengthy safety testing. It only decreases the amount of time between initial brainstorming and sticking needles in test subjects. The need to follow those subjects for years to monitor them for negative outcomes doesn't change.

There were big mistakes but attributing malice and rejecting experts is just jumping out of the pan and into the fire.