My concern is more with people in somewhat unusual circumstances who get "lost in the bureaucracy".

I am fully vaccinated, but unable to get a QR code – digital or paper version. My circumstances are somewhat unusual: I moved back to the Netherlands after a few years abroad (I am a Dutch citizen), and due to the difficult rental market and not having a job (yet) I've been forced to stay in temporary accommodations. I can't "officially register" with the city there, and thus unable to get the QR code in spite of having all the other official documentation.

This is a problem for various reasons, and something that will finally be fixed next month or so when I start my new job, but it's not really something I can fix now. Never before has such a "unusual status" led to a near-complete exclusion from basic participation in social life. I can basically do bugger all except sit at home, and after being away for many years I don't know anyone, too. It's not a good situation. I guess I should count myself lucky as we don't require these things for public transport.

Is my situation unusual? Sure. But there are lots of unusual situations out there, ranging from simple ones ("I lost my phone this morning and now I can't go to {job interview,funeral,etc.}") to more complex ones.

Furthermore, since the current vaccinations only work so-so, it's not really clear to me how effective all of this really is and I wouldn't be surprised if the effectiveness was only very limited, or even net negative (just as bicycle helmets can provide a net-negative to cyclists safety, since cyclists tend to take more risks on average while wearing a helmet).

Overall, I'm not a huge fan, although I'm obviously biased on account of being disadvantaged quite a lot in my current situation.

No offense intended but if that's the worst that happened to you during the pandemic so far, I'd count myself incredibly lucky and be happy about it. People slipping through bureaucratic cracks is unfortunate but happens with literally everything, emergency or not.

> slipping through bureaucratic cracks is unfortunate but happens with literally everything, emergency or not.

Indeed, which is why we should think carefully about it.

> if that's the worst that happened to you during the pandemic so far, I'd count myself incredibly lucky and be happy about it

The worst? Actually, no; just the current situation relevant for this conversation. And there's always someone worse off, of course.

You are not highlighting it enough:

-- you are vaccinated;

-- we could assume you received papers at the vaccination;

-- said vaccination certificates are insufficient and you seem to require a different, related, complex document, which basically states the same of your vaccination certificate.

Though one understands the use of certificates as passes could boost practice for falsification of simpler certificates, the practice as described still seems absurd.

In some places. Now. I think it's something to be concerned about.

You can't post like this to HN, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. I've banned the account. Please don't create accounts to do flamewar on HN—we're trying to avoid having this place burn to a crisp, and we need everyone's help with that: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

By the way, it isn't in your own interest to do this either. By posting this way, all you do is discredit your own view and reinforce the other side. You give people who might be open to your view a fresh reason to reject it—after all, if fuming and fulminating is the best that you can come up with, your case must be terribly weak. This is a poor trade for you to make in exchange for a moment of internet venting.

Not only that, but if your view happens to actually be correct, then what you're doing has the side effect of discrediting the truth, which is not in any of our interests. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Do you feel this strongly about driver’s licenses?

Wait till they hear about actual passports!

Well there is an interesting history to passports. This article does a decent job of outlining how they morphed from a tool to help fight the Spanish Flu to what we see today. https://apposition.substack.com/p/papers-please

Also there is quite a bit of economic work that showcases the positive impact of removing such stringent barriers to the free movement of people.

Of course, restricting people's movement across imaginary borders is very silly indeed. The point I was making is, I see plenty of frothing about vaccine passports, but not one single one of those people having conniptions about them is able to articulate what they would enable a government to do that they can't do already with your normal passport, driving license, tax ID etc.

The difference is that passports are only required for fairly rare activities (international travel, certain kinds of government interactions), whereas COVID passports are required for a lot of every-day things.

A driving license is a license is a certification that you've proven yourself capable to meet the minimum requirements to operate a potentially dangerous device, and more akin to doctor's license, lawyer license, etc. I don't think it's really the same thing.

My concern isn't really with "government can do $evil_stuff", but more in the general restriction of things.

This doesn't address the rather hysterical slippery slope argument that was being espoused. That's the one that I've never has a sane answer to - anything the government might want to do in the future with a vaccine passport, they can already do now with the plethora of unique identifying information they have on you.

HN should let brand new accounts comment once a week for the first 6 months.

The current system is fine for controlling new accounts that just show up to spew invective. They're quickly downvoted and/or flagged, even banned when they go too far. Multiple times I have seen article authors or project creators register a new HN account to specifically comment about work of theirs that has reached the front page of HN. They may write a dozen posts on their first day here, all of them useful.

Why are we attacking the person instead of the argument? We should be discussing the points, not trying to start a flame war. I'm really not sure how vaccination documentation to eat in a restaurant is equivalent to jailing people for their ethnicity, sexuality, or ideology. Can we take a step back and discuss your thought process? You have come to a much different conclusion than I and I would like to understand how. While doing so, can we kindly assume the other person is not trying to be evil?