Vaccination 'Passports'.

[ian16th]

Could this lead to the return of passenger liners?
Or having cruise ships do point to point journeys?

Spend your quarantine time travelling!

[TheGreenGoblin]

Could this lead to the return of passenger liners?
Or having cruise ships do point to point journeys?

Spend your quarantine time travelling!

What a wonderfully gracious idea...

[Pontius Navigator]

Could this lead to the return of passenger liners?
Or having cruise ships do point to point journeys?

Spend your quarantine time travelling!

The cargo passenger vessels. My father's ships carried 12 pax. I think four singles and four doubles. They had use of the saloon, rarely used by the deck officers, and a bar. They would dine with the deck officers, purser and doctor and occasionally with the engineers when they scrubbed up. He would make the South Africa run 3 times a year which matched my school holidays. I think a single fare was £100. Some passengers travelled back and forth each year. I think he also carried passengers on the Australia run.

In UK I had my own state room. The cabin was luxurious but the bathroom very Spartan by today's standards.

You can still get a berth but I believe much more expensive than the modern resort ships. Less fun too on a box ship I imagine.

One very popular alternative in UK is Trinity House. You might get the western lights off Ireland or the Scottish Isles of maybe spend the entire cruise in the Thames Estuary depending on their tasking. Again very expensive.

[Boac]

Your latter view is predicated on a vaccination being efficacious for life, or at least a very long time.

No - it is predicated on an ongoing efficacious vaccination programme until (hopefully) C19/20 is pretty much eradicated as Sars/CV1 was.

izod - Re Sea Travel - the other consideration (as with the cruise ship events last year) is would a shipping company want infected people on board able to pass the infection on during the journey?

[TheGreenGoblin]

Your latter view is predicated on a vaccination being efficacious for life, or at least a very long time.

No - it is predicated on an ongoing efficacious vaccination programme until (hopefully) C19/20 is pretty much eradicated as Sars/CV1 was.

I think you are missing the point, much in the same way that Elon Musk's rockets don't miss the landing pad, but then do fail due to exploding on arrival!

What is the basis for your optimistic presumption that the current vaccination programme will eradicate Covid as we know it (blind optimism methinks)?

PS - Look up the scientific detail about what really happened with SARS/CV1 (hint, the CV1 virus had a much higher mortality rate)...

https://theconversation.com/the-origina ... ame-138177

Vaccines will be efficacious in the short term, but this is an ongoing battle, and people will need to be revaccinated periodically, as I have already pointed out to you, hence the passport idea becomes enormously complex and unworkable...

From hereon in, given your natural optimism (not a bad thing in itself), I shall dub you Boac, the Leibnitz man who believes in "the best of all possible worlds!"

[AtomKraft]

Folks.
It is utterly baffling to me that a single person would be in favour of a document, without which your access to anywhere is prevented.

Buy hey, that's today's Great Britain.

A once proud Nation reduced to a collection of pathetic wankbags.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Folks.
It is utterly baffling to me that a single person would be in favour of a document, without which your access to anywhere is prevented.

Buy hey, that's today's Great Britain.

A once proud Nation reduced to a collection of pathetic wankbags.

I am glad to see that you are back to say that... I thought that a feminist group had successfully taken out a hit on you Atom!

[Boac]

TGG - I think you missed the (hopefully)?

Regarding SarsCV1 - as far as we know it has gone away. It can be done.

Repeated vaccinations - I did not disagree! Let's bring this back to basics, ignoring the rabid ranters - "access to anywhere'"? What on earth is he on about? The man's a fool. It's a nice day - should be out demonstrating about 'The Bill' and 'Civil Liberties' and winding up the police AK - do you have and use a passport ever? Driving Licence? Can you go to a restaurant without an international Passport or a driving licence?

TGG - let's say your job requires frequent but irregular trips 'abroad'. Your choice will be CV tests before every trip and on return - OR with a certificate of some sort, nil. Which would you prefer?

[TheGreenGoblin]

TGG - I think you missed the (hopefully)?

Regarding SarsCV1 - as far as we know it has gone away. It can be done.

Repeated vaccinations - I did not disagree! Let's bring this back to basics, ignoring the rabid ranters - "access to anywhere'"? What on earth is he on about? The man's a fool. It's a nice day - should be out demonstrating about 'The Bill' and 'Civil Liberties' and winding up the police AK - do you have and use a passport ever? Driving Licence? Can you go to a restaurant without an international Passport or a driving licence?

TGG - let's say your job requires frequent but irregular trips 'abroad'. Your choice will be CV tests before every trip and on return - OR with a certificate of some sort, nil. Which would you prefer?

Well, in answer to your blue (as opposed to the many blacks I agree with), cynically, the paper option (libertarian issues etc. aside) would be easier for me, but in practical, epidemic prevention terms, such a system would be basically pointless/useless within a very short time!

Oh isn't this fun, having the full 10 minute Covid related argument on a perfectly sunny Sunday afternoon.

PS - You didn't read that link did you?

[ribrash]

Folks.
It is utterly baffling to me that a single person would be in favour of a document, without which your access to anywhere is prevented.

Buy hey, that's today's Great Britain.

A once proud Nation reduced to a collection of pathetic wankbags.

+5

[Pontius Navigator]

TGG, plastic QR code photo card looks good but there will be a bureaucracy to kick it off, and then a whole industry to maintain it.

The old smallpox etc certificates were simply stamped and initialed. No suggestion of forgery and copying.

[TheGreenGoblin]

TGG, plastic QR code photo card looks good but there will be a bureaucracy to kick it off, and then a whole industry to maintain it.

The old smallpox etc certificates were simply stamped and initialed. No suggestion of forgery and copying.

No doubt that effort will be outsourced, without any due diligence, or competitive bids, to some Tory acolyte on the basis of their fund raising activities for the party or the fact that they have some photos of the PM, or supposedly relevant nitwit (I mean Minister), in a compromising position (most likely with a banana up the arse)! Thus the whole effort will be born of corruption and will end in disarray, and slopey Teflon shoulders when the enterprise goes tits up, with the those involved at the top walking away with millions of taxpayers' money and the virus will continue to rage unchecked midst the population.

[Boac]

Yes I did read the link and there was nothing new there. Proper control combined with a less transmissable virus led to its 'demise' in humans. The key is to break the transmission chain.

As for a paper version??!! Available on Amazon within hours of release. Print your own apps by the hundred. Before you ask, no, I have no idea how it is to be implemented nor how those without Smart Phones will be served. We need to see how the various trials around the world go. We are not bound to adopt any BoJo 'crony' scheme - which may not anyway be acceptable to other countries - that is why we would be doing it, not so AK can get to his demo and wave his placards.

"such a system would be basically pointless/useless within a very short time!"

Why?

[TheGreenGoblin]

Yes I did read the link and there was nothing new there. Proper control combined with a less transmissable virus led to its 'demise' in humans. The key is to break the transmission chain.

"such a system would be basically pointless/useless within a very short time!"

Why?

If you can't see the reason for the point quoted above, based upon my premise that the virus will not die out, but will mutate, and vary, I am not gonna waste any more time debating pointlessly with you. Let see what happens! If this "passport" idea works I will use mine to buy you a beer. Howzat? If not I expect you to take a full page advert in The Times stating that the Green Goblin was right

[Bob]

Vax Passport?, even if there is some merit in theory its implementation will be **** up beyond recognition by whichever Mate of Boris' gets the contract, morphing into little more than another failed way to control the little people
..............................and all the while the UK will move another small step closer to being a right wing fascist state without the strength of leadership to actually get us there
Its all rather pathetic

[TheGreenGoblin]

Vax Passport?, even if there is some merit in theory its implementation will be **** up beyond recognition by whichever Mate of Boris' gets the contract, morphing into little more than another failed way to control the little people
..............................and all the while the UK will move another small step closer to being a right wing fascist state without the strength of leadership to actually get us there
Its all rather pathetic

We are certainly going in the wrong direction that is for sure!

[PHXPhlyer]

Pro-Trump web forums are abuzz with directions to forge Covid vaccine cards

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/ ... on-rcna802

Pro-Trump web forums are abuzz with directions to forge Covid vaccine cards
Some states put templates online, spurring pro-Trump and anti-vaccination forums to start spreading tips for how to create fake cards.

April 29, 2021, 1:44 PM MST / Updated April 29, 2021, 4:06 PM MST
By Kevin Collier and Ben Collins
Specific directions showing how to forge Covid-19 vaccination cards have proliferated on conspiracy, pro-Trump and anti-vaccination forums throughout the internet in recent weeks, as users have exploited a largely makeshift verification system.

The cards, distributed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have been handed out to the more than 140 million Americans who have already received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccination. The Biden administration has declared it wouldn't create a federal vaccination database, citing privacy concerns, paving the way for the cards to become the country’s default national way to verify if someone has been vaccinated.

And while one state — New York — has embraced a vaccination verification app, there is scant evidence that others are close behind.

While much of the country is in the early stages of deciding how to ask employees, students and travelers to prove they've been vaccinated, most of those entities that have already established a plan rely on those cards. The Silicon Valley company Salesforce announced earlier this month that employees returning to work in person will need to show their cards, and United Airlines said it will require the same of its employees.

Seven universities that already have plans in place to ask students to be vaccinated before attending this fall — American University, Bowdoin College, the University of Colorado Boulder, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Fort Lewis College, Rutgers University and Wesleyan University — all said the verification process would consist of asking students to upload their CDC cards, at least if they're coming from out of state.

But since the cards are marked by hand, don't contain much information, are printed on easily obtainable heavy white paper and are impossible to quickly verify, it leaves an opportunity for the anti-vaccine community to beat the system by sharing directions on how to forge them.

"It's a cardboard paper card," said Alyssa Miller, a cybersecurity expert who specializes in protecting large organizations. "There's absolutely nothing about it that would prevent you from reproducing it."

"How are you going to make someone at the opposite end, the ones who are supposed to be verifying these, to look at one and determine if it's legitimate or if it's fake?" she said.

In March, the FBI released a public warning that creating or buying a fake vaccine card is illegal.

On conspiracy and anti-government forums throughout the web, users have linked to card templates that were left visible on the websites of state governments, including high-resolution PDFs from the websites of both the Wyoming and Missouri health departments.

The CDC has since delivered guidance to states to pull the templates from their sites, citing “misuse” by the anti-vaccine community, according to state officials.

"CDC has consistently advised states not to post the vaccine card template publicly," CDC spokesperson Kate Grusich said in a statement.

The instructions for how to create forged cards have appeared in high-ranking comments and posts on pro-Trump forums, like TheDonald.win, which was rebranded to Patriots.Win after its userbase urged one another to storm the Capitol in the days before the Jan. 6 riot.

On the extremist forum 4chan, users were told to download a template from Wyoming’s Department of Health website, then given specific directions for the thickness of cardstock needed to replicate the cards. The directions note that some vaccination centers affix stick-on labels on cards to denote the date, so the recommended resolution for the printed labels is also provided.

Versions of the instructions, which have also been posted to gun forums and QAnon forums, remind users to write the date in a blue ballpoint pen, and not to be too neat with their handwriting, emulating a rushed or tired nurse. Some instructions provide potential batch numbers of the Pfizer or Moderna shots that align with dates they were distributed.

The posts usually link to templates that were publicly available and posted on the back end of the websites of several states.

A spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services said they received a call from the CDC "about a month ago" saying "it would be best for states to no longer have that material available online as some were using the card/file for fraudulent use."

"Initially, it was included on our vaccinators' resources web page because there were times when providers would not receive enough cards with the vaccines, especially when additional doses were being drawn before larger ancillary kits were made available," a Missouri Health Department spokesperson said.

Wyoming’s Health Department also confirmed its template was removed April 1, citing "misuse."

"The initial goal for posting the document was to make things a little easier for community providers," a department spokesperson said.

Despite how easy the cards are to forge, digital privacy advocates say that a paper-based system is still preferable to a central online database or smartphone app. More programs like New York's Excelsior program — so far the only statewide smartphone app that functions as a vaccine passport — would create more ways for individuals' data to be monitored, said Hayley Tsukayama, a legislative activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit.

"Setting up massive systems for tracking folks, collecting their information, and then with no kind of exit plan, how is that data going to be treated?" she said.

"We have an analog system that works for the purposes of what we're doing. You know sometimes when you're looking at smart technology, and you're like, 'Does that really need to be smart? Was that a thing that I needed in my life?'" she said. "I think this is a good example of that."

One alternative is allowing vaccine distributors, such as state governments and pharmacies, to print official cards with more built-in safeguards, more akin to a driver's license. But that requires longer-term planning for a vaccine response that's largely created in real time, said Eva Velasquez, the president of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a victim advocacy organization.

"Paper is always going to be less of a risk for unintended compromise of anything digital," she said.

"If [the CDC card] is just a short-term solution for how we temporarily navigate the world and get back to resuming our normal, then it is probably adequate. But there's a lot of unknowns. We don't know how long this is going to last."

Still, the templates now proliferate online. Some users have created archives of the documents using instant archival services like archive.is, which users now link to directly, along with the forgery instructions.

Polling has shown vaccine hesitancy is most prevalent among Republican men, with one Monmouth University poll from April 14 showing 43 percent of Republicans saying they would never receive the shot.

On pro-Trump forums like Patriots.Win where the forgeries run rampant, conspiracy theories about the vaccine and government control are the norm, not the exception.

“If they actually go the route of trying to make this ‘mandatory,’ this will become one of the most forged documents in history,” reads the top comment on one of the posts directing users to forge cards.

PP

[OFSO]

An article in the Financial Times on the new Covid Passports for travel. Eight countries in the EU are producing their own versions. Denmark has one already but other countries do not accept it. The UK is undecided. Spain is "wait and see". The EU is producing its own but says Member States can also have their own. Some Member States will accept the EU pass, some are saying it could be forged. The airlines are accepting these but are also producing their own and there are believed to be currently three "in use", different airlines going for different ones. In every case it's planned you need a CV test 72hrs before departure and one after landing.

Phew! For a moment there I thought things might get stupid...

[ian16th]

I still think it was a big mistake to invent the name 'Vaccination Passport'.
Vaccination Certificate' is much less emotional.

[Dushan]

Folks.
It is utterly baffling to me that a single person would be in favour of a document, without which your access to anywhere is prevented.

Buy hey, that's today's Great Britain.

A once proud Nation reduced to a collection of pathetic wankbags.

I may have said this earlier but it’s worth repeating: 1984 was a warning, not an instruction manual.