How strongly are anti-vaxxers incentivised to create fake vaccine passports, anyways? There’s a certain aspect that you mentioned—accepting the solemnity of the ritual requires that one submits to the rules, that they agree that they need to show a vaccine card to enter restaurants. Anti-vaxxers by and large either fundamentally object to the vaccine and are proud of that fact, or they are still hesitant to get the vaccine because they’re scared of it/think they don’t need it/it’s too much of an inconvenience/whatever else. For the first group, showing a fake vaccine card shows submission and acceptance to vaccination. To the second, obtaining a vaccine card when free vaccines are available basically everywhere takes both a measure of effort and willingness to blatantly lie that doesn’t seem particularly common amongst a population. Thus, I think that at the very least, requiring vaccines to do something will cause large decreases in the number of unvaccinated people doing that thing. I also believe that requiring vaccines to access large and growing parts of everyday life will directly increase the number of vaccinated people, although admittedly I am less confident in this assertion.
A man buys two horses but he can’t tell them apart, so he asks the farmer next door what to do. He says to cut one of their tails off. So the man does. But then the other horse’s tail gets caught in a bush and rips off. So again, he can’t tell them apart again.
He asks the farmer for his advice a second time. He tells him to cut one of the horse’s ears. So he does. But then the other horse gets its ear ripped in a barbed wire fence.
Again, he asks the farmer what to do and he tells her to measure them.
He comes back and says: “Thanks for your advice. It turns out the white horse is two inches taller than the black horse
You may underestimate the second group. People who are convinced that the government is mandating poisonous treatment are pretty paranoid to begin with and as many paranoid people, they will attempt to hide and blend in in any way they can manage to avoid the poisonous treatment.
They...sorta hide it, but then I think they tend to give themselves away. I think they’re actually proud of their paranoia, and that’s hard to contain.
Fair point, but remember we’re talking about people who are refusing to take life saving medication, for ideological reasons. So it’s reasonable to expect they aren’t so great at hiding stuff, and that they like to talk.
An anti-vaxxer co-worker of mine floored me once when she bragged about reusing uncancelled stamps. I’m her union rep, and I gently reminded her that (a) She was committing mail fraud. (b) Postal workers depend on revenue from mail to earn their salaries, and they’re unionized civil servants like us.
This sounds like horns effect to me. There’s no reason to assume “disagrees with you about the costs and benefits of a vaccine” has any correlation with “unskilled at lying”, even if they disagree for dumb reasons and are wrong.
I agree with you that there’s a set of people who will loudly announce their opposition, because they view it as the principled thing to do. But I’ve also seen people on reddit or mommy forums discuss the joy of successfully passing their unvaccinated kids off as vaccinated.
FYI, there is an enforcement mechanism for fake vaccination credentials, separate and distinct from what we expect (or even should expect) of “gatekeepers”: fraud reporting from the public:
The Key to NYC provides that gatekeepers can report fraud, but doesn’t require them to. Fraud reporting is outsourced to the general public, so that the gatekeeper role can remain a purely administrative control (rather than an engineering control).
How strongly are anti-vaxxers incentivised to create fake vaccine passports, anyways? There’s a certain aspect that you mentioned—accepting the solemnity of the ritual requires that one submits to the rules, that they agree that they need to show a vaccine card to enter restaurants. Anti-vaxxers by and large either fundamentally object to the vaccine and are proud of that fact, or they are still hesitant to get the vaccine because they’re scared of it/think they don’t need it/it’s too much of an inconvenience/whatever else. For the first group, showing a fake vaccine card shows submission and acceptance to vaccination. To the second, obtaining a vaccine card when free vaccines are available basically everywhere takes both a measure of effort and willingness to blatantly lie that doesn’t seem particularly common amongst a population. Thus, I think that at the very least, requiring vaccines to do something will cause large decreases in the number of unvaccinated people doing that thing. I also believe that requiring vaccines to access large and growing parts of everyday life will directly increase the number of vaccinated people, although admittedly I am less confident in this assertion.
Excellent point. I’m reminded of this joke:
You may underestimate the second group. People who are convinced that the government is mandating poisonous treatment are pretty paranoid to begin with and as many paranoid people, they will attempt to hide and blend in in any way they can manage to avoid the poisonous treatment.
They...sorta hide it, but then I think they tend to give themselves away. I think they’re actually proud of their paranoia, and that’s hard to contain.
Of course, those ones are much easier to notice, so it’s not very informative about the people who are good at hiding it.
Fair point, but remember we’re talking about people who are refusing to take life saving medication, for ideological reasons. So it’s reasonable to expect they aren’t so great at hiding stuff, and that they like to talk.
An anti-vaxxer co-worker of mine floored me once when she bragged about reusing uncancelled stamps. I’m her union rep, and I gently reminded her that (a) She was committing mail fraud. (b) Postal workers depend on revenue from mail to earn their salaries, and they’re unionized civil servants like us.
This sounds like horns effect to me. There’s no reason to assume “disagrees with you about the costs and benefits of a vaccine” has any correlation with “unskilled at lying”, even if they disagree for dumb reasons and are wrong.
I agree with you that there’s a set of people who will loudly announce their opposition, because they view it as the principled thing to do. But I’ve also seen people on reddit or mommy forums discuss the joy of successfully passing their unvaccinated kids off as vaccinated.
FYI, there is an enforcement mechanism for fake vaccination credentials, separate and distinct from what we expect (or even should expect) of “gatekeepers”: fraud reporting from the public:
https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-03447
and
https://dos.ny.gov/news/consumer-alert-new-york-state-division-consumer-protection-warns-new-yorkers-about-risks-fake
and last but not least:
https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/report-fraud/
The Key to NYC provides that gatekeepers can report fraud, but doesn’t require them to. Fraud reporting is outsourced to the general public, so that the gatekeeper role can remain a purely administrative control (rather than an engineering control).