If someone is showing someone else's proof of vaccination while they are not vaccinated, they actually might be a threat.

The QR code by itself is not proof of anything until you have verified that it actually belongs to the person showing it. That's where the ID comes in.

Just out of curiosity, what is the minimum net improvement in public safety you think justifies asking every person to show their identity information every time they walk into a shop or restaurant? After all the progress made so far with traditional disease mitigation, what would happen if you simply don't choose to force everyone to show their IDs everywhere they go? If you're saying vaccines and lockdowns weren't enough, what is the target you're chasing exactly? Is it really worth it?

I am not sure what you want to get at but if someone wants to be treated like being vaccinated, they should have to proof that they actually are. Anything else incentivizes behaviour that undermines the efforts to get a grip on the pandemic (i.e. it would let the unvaccinated flaunt the rules by just claiming that they no longer pose a threat to others and the pandemic would happily rage on).

We do not implement these measures here (Germany) at the moment. Anyone can visit stores or e.g. retirement homes without having to show a negative test result or proof of vaccination. Before easing the measures, people with proof of vaccination were treated like having a negative result in general, i.e. they could do all the things that others also could but without the hassle of having to be tested.

This is what I don't understand either... vaccines work, health systems in most eu countries are pretty empty of covid patients now, anyone who wants a vaccine can get one... but we're still requiring people from countries with 99positive/100k to show vaccination proof to enter a country with 98positive/100k.

We have the vacciness, anyone can get one for free, just open up, and let the antivaxxers risk it if they want.

It's not that simple.

Even with a vaccine you can get COVID. Any body hosting a COVID virus is an environment where mutations happen.

We don't just want people to stop dying from COVID. We also want to stop new more dangerous strains of the virus to emerge or propagate.

I think that the point is to raise social pressure to get people to get vaccinated.

If you are vaccinated, you just show your pass and go into the bar. If you aren't you have to produce a test. A recent test. So frequent renew. Or you might just not be allowed to get in.

So just get the vaccine and life will be easier.

If you don't want the vaccine, just stay at home.

In the US context I would say this is a privacy violation. It's another avenue of obtaining identifying information about you, to abuse with no restrictions.

But one of the main benefits of the GDPR is making it illegal for businesses to keep surveillance records on you. This way you don't have to worry about keeping basic information like your name secret in the first place.

The US really needs something like the GDPR to restore some societal trust. As it stands, I'm planning on wearing a mask into stores etc for as long as I can get away with it.

> In the US context I would say this is a privacy violation.

Yeah, but that's the US. Which is well known for being pretty wacky on these things.

> It's another avenue of obtaining identifying information about you, to abuse with no restrictions.

How? You hold up your vaccine pass to the bouncer, and your photo ID, so he can see that the vaccine pass is actually yours: He compares the face in the ID to yours, and the name on the pass to that on the ID. Then he turns away from you and says "Next, please". In two minutes he has forgotten your name, and in thirty he remembers your face to the extent that he can say "Yeah, I think I let that one in tonight."

Does he photograph your pass and ID, or type them into some computer system? Hardly. So what's to "abuse"?

> This way you don't have to worry about keeping basic information like your name secret in the first place.

In any sane society, your name isn't supposed to be a secret.

Dang, Americans are a funny people. Paranoid about all the wrong things.