Someone on Facebook claimed that covid vaccine passports were no big deal, since many countries require or recommend vaccinations already.
She said 154/195 countries in the world have some sort of non-covid vaccine requirement or recommendation, citing the WHO.
I decided to investigate.
The only WHO source (List of countries, territories and areas: Vaccination requirements and recommendations for international travellers, including yellow fever and malaria) I could find on this does not list the number of countries with vaccine requirements or recommendations.
There're 108 places which require yellow fever vaccination - but only if you arrive from a place where there's a risk of the disease. And some of them exempt certain yellow fever risk areas. A few more recommend yellow fever vaccination - but a recommendation is not a requirement.
Only 16 places require yellow fever vaccination of everyone (Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, CAR, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, DRC, French Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone and Togo).
Myanmar requires nationals and residents to have the yellow fever vaccine if they're going to a place with the disease.
As for polio, 8 places - India, Indonesia, Iraq, Qatar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles and Sri Lanka require arrivals from places with polio to be vaccinated against that. Iraq requires that of travellers going to places with polio too. Saudi Arabia will give you the polio vaccine even though you must already be vaccinated to enter. Pakistan gives polio to all departing travellers and incoming long-term travellers. Syria requires polio vaccines for visitors from certain places and for departing travellers.
As for other vaccines, Saudi Arabia requires incoming pilgrims to have a meningitis vaccine and Bosnia requires *departing* travellers to have various vaccines.
So all in all, only 24 places have some type of mandatory vaccine for all incoming travellers, and 2 more require that of all outgoing travellers, and most of them are in Africa so most travellers are not likely to be affected by them.
On the other hand, covid vaccine passports seem likely to be adopted by many or even most countries in the post-covid landscape.
Another relevant consideration is that the yellow fever vaccine has been around since 1938. The most recent polio vaccine came in 1961. In contrast, covid vaccines are less than a year old. It is reasonable to have different standards for longstanding vaccines compared to new ones.
Plus, all of the above is just for international travel, which is relatively infrequent and relatively discretionary. Covid vaccine passports, on the other hand, are proposed for much more mundane things.
In New York, the Excelsior Pass is being used to control entry to some dance performances, comedy shows and bars. These are all venues that most people would visit more often than they would engage in international travel.
In the UK, until recently, there were plans for vaccine passports to be used to enter pubs (and these plans may return), even if this might have been ruled to be unlawful discrimination.
Israel has just scrapped the green pass, formerly used for sporting events, cultural venues, restaurants and more. But who knows if they'll panic about the latest variant and bring it back?
The EU, at least, is showing more restraint.
In France, for example, health passes (pass sanitaire) are only going to be used for big gatherings but not (at least for now) for museums, movie theaters, libraries, theme parks, big markets, zoos, places of worship, camping places, department stores, big public places open to the public and educational sites. Indeed, such places asking for health passes can be legally sanctioned. Notably, too, vaccination is not the only way to get a health pass (ergo why it's not called a vaccine passport): you can also get one if you've tested negative for covid or recovered from it.
The EU in general has the EU Digital COVID Certificate, with the same 3 criteria for getting it, and it seemingly will only be used for travel.
Indeed, if the aim is to ensure that you do not pose a risk to others, including those who test negative or who have recovered from covid seems sufficient, especially since we know that the vaccinated can still infect others. Indeed, ensuring people test negative is actually more important, since then they would be unable to infect others (for as long as they remained negative, at least).
This suggests that vaccine passports might be more about coercing people into getting vaccinated than protecting others.
