The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: Vaccine passports are essential to stopping the spread of COVID-19 and safely reopen our economies

Episode Date: April 29, 2021

As people around the world begin to contemplate life after COVID-19, governments are trying to figure out how to re-open their economies safely while the virus continues to circulate. Some countries, like Israel and Denmark, have introduced digital vaccine passports to allow residents access to indoor spaces like restaurants and movie theatres. Those in favour of these certificates argue that they are the safest, easiest, and most effective way of reopening the economy quickly. Citizens should only be allowed to participate in society if they can prove they aren't a health risk to others. And while it is true that everyone has the right to forgo vaccination, they must also accept the limitations and consequences that come with that choice. Critics see these passports as a coercive scheme that forces people to get vaccinated, as well as a dangerous threat to personal rights and freedoms that will exacerbate society's inequities and transfer more power into the hands of the government. The state, they say, has no right to mandate personal movements based on a medical treatment, and vaccine passports have no place in any democratic and free society. Arguing for the motion is Ezekiel Emanuel. He is an oncologist, bioethicist, and Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, and a former member of Joe Biden's COVID-19 transition team. Arguing against the motion is Natalie Kofler. She's a molecular biologist and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and the founding director of Editing Nature at Yale University QUOTES: EZEKIEL EMANUEL: "We have long had policies of vaccine certification, and we're simply adapting those to the new 21st century and COVID." NATALIE KOFLER: "'Vaccine passports' add another layer of disenfranchisement and inequity towards people and countries that have been disproportionately impacted by serious issues in vaccine distribution." Sources: 7NewsAustralia, CBS, NBC, CTV, France24 The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths - @rudyardg.   Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ The Munk Debates podcast is produced by Antica, Canada's largest private audio production company - https://www.anticaproductions.com/   Executive Producer: Stuart Coxe, CEO Antica Productions Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran Lynch Associate Producer: Abhi RahejaBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are options, and that's why we need to take this opportunity seriously. There's no way you can prevent global warming unless China is part of the solution. This is not normal male behavior. This is predatory behavior. We don't know how bad this bug is. We don't know what this bug does. All of that was thrown away in those eight minutes and 46 seconds, and that's the moment that I became an abolitionist. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Hello and welcome to the monk debates. we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day to arm you,

the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. Vaccine passports are necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19 and safely reopen the economy. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has launched an ambitious plan to reopen the country's economy. It was the state hit hardest by the deadly winter surge. Now California, the world's fifth largest economy plans to fully reopen by June 15. Life begins to return to normal for Israeli adults, providing they can flash their green pass. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. Eating out, seeing a movie, going to a ballgame.

These are social activities that were part of everyday life prior to the pandemic. Now countries with high vaccination rates are beginning to think about how to reopen their borders and economies while keeping the pandemic under control. The idea of vaccination status being useful for international travel is something that all countries are looking at. I do think that's going to be part of the way people deal with it. We need to think about that. That's Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of Britain, where they're considering vaccine passports for foreign travel and mass gatherings. Others like Israel, Iceland, Denmark have already introduced certificates that give vaccinated citizens access to public

spaces like concert halls or shopping malls. But some governments are steadily opposed to such measures. We're not doing any vaccine passports. I mean, that's totally unacceptable. So people don't have to worry about it here in the state of Florida. And if folks try to start doing it privately, we may have a role to play there as well, because I do think it's unacceptable. Many critics see vaccine passports as a coercive scheme that will exacerbate society's inequalities and are in and of themselves an assault on our personal privacy. On this installment of the monk debates, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion,

be it resolved, vaccine passports are necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19 and safely reopen the economy. Arguing for the motion is Ezekiel Emmanuel. He's the vice provost of global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, and a past member of President Biden's COVID-19 advisory board. Arguing against the motion is Natalie Koffler. She's a molecular biologist and lecturer at Harvard Medical School and the founding director of Editing Nature at Yale University.

Ezekiel, Natalie, welcome to the Monk Debates. Nice to be here. Thanks for having us. Well, I'm really looking forward to this debate today. Well, things here in Canada are quite tough, frankly, with a third wave of COVID sweeping the country, I think all of us are looking to the United States, the UK and Israel, to try to understand what comes next,

how we are going to negotiate a world within which COVID still echoes, influences and affects our lives, and the whole debate around vaccine passports, I think is central to that conversation of what does the next chapter of COVID look like. So the opportunity for us to connect with both of you, with your considered opinions, your engagement with this issue is just a privilege indeed on behalf of the Monk audience. So our resolution today, simple to the point, be it resolved, vaccine passports

are necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19 and safely reopen the economy. Ezekiel, you're arguing in favor of the motion, so I'll put two minutes on the clock and turn the program over to you. It's not a question of why or whether we're going to get vaccinated. vaccine passports, it's really a question of how. They are going to be here for four main reasons. First, practicality. We're going to have them for travel, for admission to sporting events, for entertainment, indoor activity school. Second, to reopen the economy, especially the entertainment, hospitality, travel side of the economy, which is so large, we're going to need them. Third, they're ethical. They cohere with public health.

ethics, especially the principle of adopting the least restrictive means to achieve a public health end and vaccine passports are part of them. And finally, longstanding policies permit them. I happen to be holding my yellow fever vaccine passport issued by the Department of Health and Human Services in collaboration and consistent with the WHO. We've been using these kind of certifications. We may not have called them vaccine passports in the past, but we've been using them for a long time. So the question isn't, will we use them? The question isn't why or whether we should use them. The question is how to use them to minimize, it seems to me, three challenges we have,

and there are challenges we have with any policy. We don't want to compound discrimination and make it so that only the rich and privilege get this. We want it to be a matter of equality. Second, we want to be sure that these passports are not a grounds for exploitation. We don't want our privacy violated, and we don't want someone to commercialize them and make money on our information. And finally, we want to make them easy to use and useful with being the least burdensome for people. The last thing I would say is vaccine passports have also incentive. It's an incentive for people who might be a little hesitant.

might be waiting on the fence to actually get vaccinated. And there is no doubt, if you look at the data, especially from Israel and the UK, that getting vaccinated, getting above the 45% level brings the number of cases and deaths down. And somewhere 70 to 85% is probably herd immunity. And that'll bring the cases as well as the deaths in the morbidity down from COVID to sort of flu-like levels. where we cease to have a pandemic, we cease to have a global health emergency, and we can get back to routine life facing routine risks. So again, I don't think it's a question of whether we're going to have it. It's a question of how to do vaccine passports because they're here. It's inevitable.

Thank you, Ezekiel. Well, we're now going to hear the other point of view on this resolution, be it resolved, vaccine passports are necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19 and safe. reopen the economy. Natalie, you're opposed to our motion today. Let's hear your opening remarks. I think when we talk about vaccine passports, a lot of it does center around this idea of returning to normal. And I think we have to be really clear about what normal is. So we've seen what normal has been throughout this pandemic. In fact, this pandemic has, as many of you known, shone light of the cracks within our normal. It started with who died from COVID-19 early on. We know that in America, black Americans are two times more likely to have

died from COVID-19 than white Americans. In Canada, COVID-19 deaths, 50% of them are accounted for by those 85 and older. So our elders have been sacrificed in this pandemic. It's gone on to show who was sacrificial with essential work. So people like Zeke and I who had the privilege to work from home in the comfort and safety of our home offices, while those who are considered essential workers, disproportionately women and people of color, have been having to move through society and expose themselves to undue risk. And it also showed who could access testing, right, to be able to keep ourselves safe. We know that testing access was much reduced for low-income individuals and people of color, both in Canada and the United States. So now we have this vaccines,

or vaccines, which are really exciting. You know, they are the ticket of getting us out of this pandemic. But, you know, perfectly to script, we see who's been able to access vaccines early on. We know, for example, in the United States, communities of color and low-income communities were last in line to get vaccinated. We're seeing the same situation here in Canada. And so this is issues in domestic distribution. And then the distribution of vaccine internationally is even a more severe.

inequitable situation, right, where countries like the United States are moving into having every single person over 16 being able to be vaccinated, where we have countries throughout the world that haven't even be able to vaccinate all over their health care workers. And so what's really concerning or what we have to really think about with vaccine passports is that on top of all these existing inequities that this pandemic has lain bare to, we're then layering on a program that is then going to allow those who have been privileged lucky enough to have survived COVID-19, lucky enough to have been vaccinated to be able to move through society in ways that those who haven't can't. And this is where I think they should question we cannot skip past. We do need to think about

if this is the only alternative to return to a place where people can be safe and we can open economies. And so I think we do have to be careful about not jumping forward to how do we do this before asking the should question and making sure that we don't further disadvantage those who have already been hurt immensely by this pandemic. For me, this is incredibly concerning to enter into a new level of normal and a continuation of a normal that's been fatal, it's been unjust, and it's been dangerous. And so I really am going to be pushing for actually thinking about a public health ethic in the space of a COVID-19 vaccine passport and understanding how we can do that, but also whether we should do that. Thank you, Natalie. Well, chance now for rebuttals, for both of you to react to

what you've just heard from each other. So, Ezekiel, you're up first. Another two minutes on the clock. What do you want to pull out of Natalie's opening statement here, possibly taking exception with? Well, look, there's heated agreement that COVID has exposed deep inequities in our health care system, our public health care system, and that those need to be addressed and need to be resolved. That doesn't mean, and it doesn't translate into the fact that immunity passports or vaccine passports are going to be inherently inequitable. The underlying question is the early data do suggest, as Natalie points out, that the people who were able to get vaccinated were tended to be white and well-off, mainly because they could navigate the system, but that is not

inevitably true. Certainly in the United States, we've had two states, West Virginia as an example, and Alaska as an example, where it has not been the rich and well-off who've gotten it, and many other states are steaming ahead and equalizing the distribution. New Mexico, which has the highest poverty rate in the country, very, very near the country. Very, very near the top in terms of vaccination. So we agree you can't allow the underlying disparities of the health care system to be perpetuated by vaccine passports. But what we're seeing and what we've seen in Israel and what we've seen in Britain is once you get to about 50% of the population vaccinated, the difference is not race related. It's not socioeconomic related. It's more

attitudinal. And we have data in the United States that the attitude that relates to getting a vaccine is not about the disparity of race or the disparity of income. It's about the disparity of politics. Trump supporters are much more resistant. And those people who are more, you might say, middle of the road or more liberal are much more likely to get vaccinated. That disparity in attitude is not one that we should worry about in terms of the vaccine passports. As long as everyone has access to a vaccine and that what is inhibiting them is their attitude, there is no in principle argument against vaccine passports. They are very effective ways of opening up the economy and permitting people to exercise their freedoms and participate in socially valuable

activities. Thank you, Ezekiel. Okay, Natalie, your opportunity here for a rebuttal. you can take up Ezekiel's opening statement or what you've just heard from him now? You know, I want to firstly echo that I think Zieg and I are very much an agreement of the need for vaccine mandates in certain scenarios where you do have high-risk situations. So they're, you know, very much could be ethical and scientific good reason to have vaccine mandates for employees working at long-term care facilities, for example. And potentially even for schools, if you can make vaccines accessible to all students, this gets. it's a little bit diceier, though, particularly in the American context. But I do want to push back a little bit. And I think this is a word of caution, actually, for Canadians who are considering this

and Canadian policymakers, really looking at what is the level of vaccine resistance within Canada because the U.S. does have a serious vaccine resistance issue. And there you can start to see arguments of Zieg's making sense, where this could be used as a way to sort of, you know, for lack of a better word, coerce people into getting vaccinated if they're going to have certain liberties taken away from them if they don't. But I think we also just need to step back a little bit when we're talking about policies to reopen economies and protect public health. One thing that we really need to be considering is that they are scientifically sound, right?

And so this becomes a really serious concern at the international level when we're talking about using vaccine passports to govern travel of individuals. There are almost 17 vaccines now in different stages of regulatory approval. by the WHO. They all have varying levels of efficacy. It remains to be determined whether these vaccines prevent transmission of the virus. And so again, the U.S. is a really unique situation. They have really high level of access to Pfizer and Moderna, which both have very high levels of efficacies. Different nations are going to have different rollouts of different vaccines. And this is something we really have to be thinking about. From the ethical standpoint, I also want to

still push back on the ethics of employing something like a vaccine passport for people to move through society to attend certain leisure activities. So again, drawing the line of where this is ethically and public health initiative that could be really useful, like schools, places of work, perhaps when you're working in high-risk situations, penitentiaries, long-term care facilities, things like that, versus being able to go to the movies or go to a concert. And I think we have to be really specific about where this is ethically permissible and not and not lump them together in one sort of big swoop that this can be fine to be used wherever and not give this the thought and foresight that it requires.

Hi, Monk podcast listeners. Wanted to let you know about our spring 2021 Monk Dialogue series on the fate and future of our democracy. These are in-depth online and interactive video conversations with some of the world's brightest thinkers. We'll feature over the next number of weeks, everyone from Jonathan Haidt, to Scott Galloway, to Douglas Murray, to Nazarene Malik, to Timothy Snyder, and Irshad Manji, all reflecting on how has COVID-19 reshaped our democracy. How are we dealing with the forces and stresses of this pandemic on our institutions and on our shared values? You can find out more

about the Monk Dialogues on our website, wwwwmunkdebates.com forward slash dialogues. Now back to our program. My opportunity now to jump in and kind of think of some questions that are top of mind for our listeners. And Ezekiel, let me come to you first on Natalie's last point there. Is it fair to say, look, to go to a Dodgers game, you're going to need a vaccine passport because, hey,

there's another public policy objective lurking in the background, which is we want you to get vaccinated. We want to nudge you using passports to, you know, think of the rest of society and think about public health writ large. Is that what you're arguing? A kind of broad reopening of the economy that sees vaccine passports expand well beyond the setting of long-term care facilities, schools, maybe high-risk workplaces like manufacturing to our leisure lives, to the optional choices that we make in our day-to-day existence? First of all, let me note that by you're using optional choices in our day-to-day existence, you're making quite clear these are not necessary things and they're not activities we're entitled to. And so there's no in principle justice argument, oh, I'm deprived of going to a Dodgers game or a, you know, a Toronto Blue Jays game and therefore my rights are infringed.

That is not an argument either you, Natalie, or even a Blue Jays fan can make. You're not entitled to it, and therefore restricting who can go is perfectly ethical. Okay. So now let us go to the question of, is it ethical to say you've got to have this sign so you don't endanger other people when you go to that game? It seems to me you have one of two choices. You either show you're vaccinated or you get a test before you go in. And the reason we don't want you endangering other people with an infection. disease and the risk is sufficiently high that we're going to employ this method.

That seems to me perfectly ethical thing to do. And what it does is, by the way, it permits other people to go in knowing that they're not going to run high risk of getting a potentially fatal illness. And I do think that is a permissible for discretionary activities like going to a sports game. It's a different story, if you said to me, to walk on the street, to get out of your house, to get out of lockdown, you would be required to get a vaccine. You might be required to wear a mask if you don't have a vaccine. And I could imagine that scenario. But I think it's a, for discretionary activities like travel, you show that you're vaccinated. You don't have to quarantine on pond coming into a country. That seems perfectly ethical thing to do.

Natalie, let's have your perspective. on that. I want to make something clear, though, right? Is that the necessity and the arguments for the necessity of a vaccine passport are only relevant if you haven't reached community level immunity, right? Hurt immunity. If you have reached community level immunity and you have community level protection against COVID-19, there's absolutely no need to have things like vaccine passports. Because in the rare scenarios that you have maybe people that are very vulnerable, that can't get vaccinated, then, you know, you need to give thought to that. But once you reach herd immunity, there's absolutely no need to be having vaccine passports, you know, to say who can go to a Dodgers game

or who can go to the Italian restaurant down the street that just becomes unnecessary. And so this is where I think, you know, I can understand Zieg's point of view because in the U.S., there is this large vaccine resistant population that likely will just not get vaccinated even when it becomes available as it is right now. But there are other countries that don't suffer that same level of polarity. And that's where countries really need to think about domestic implementation of these sorts of protocols. Let me make three responses to what Natalie said. First, I don't think it's right that once you read herd immunity, you don't need these passports. You will need them for international travel. How will Taiwan? How will Vietnam? How will Australia?

validate that, well, they're going to say, and they have said, all right, you come to our country, 14 days, quarantine in a hotel, you can't get out of that room, forget it until that passes, you pass a negative test. Having a vaccine, okay. So maybe if you're a sealed country, second, at least at this stage of the game, we do not know what herd immunity level is. Is there going to be 70% of the population, 85%, and it's probably going to depend a little more on microenvironments, not just what the national average is. And I think that's a little concerning. It is the case that we might have herd immunity to some variants, but not hurt immunity to all variants.

And that may make this whole thing a little complicated in terms of the vaccine. And I think that's a valid point. The final thing I would say is if you look at Britain and Israel, both countries got to a sort of level, about 50% of the population vaccinated. And then you begin to see this plateau. I don't know what the situation in Canada is. But I am willing to make a bet on this debate for a dinner, Natalie, that, in fact, Canada will have the same kind of resistance about 50 or 60%. where it'll become very hard to go from 60 to 70, 75, 80%, whatever that number is that we need. And it won't be just because the United States is different.

I think we are different, but I don't think it'll turn out all that different. I think it's going to be there's a pool of people in every country who are going to be hesitant and a little more resistant to getting it and convincing them, one of the tricks may be a vaccine passport and access to a lot more freedoms and activities that you can do. So, Natalie, come back on those points. I know you want to, but just make sure you focus on international travel because that's such a key kind of piece of this. A lot of people very optimistic that vaccine passports are the way to end these quarantines to, in a sense, reopen global travel for leisure, for business, an essential part of returning to that pre-COVIDs. at normal? Yeah, it's a really important question. I think it's another really important point of clarity. You know, I think when we're thinking about policy domestically versus internationally,

we have to have very different considerations. So I will certainly jump to that. I think the international story, what really needs to be thought about, and I'm going to push back against actually one of Zieg's opening remarks, is the precedence set by a yellow fever card. These are not yellow fever cards. There is one globally, commercially available. yellow fever vaccine in the world. It has been around since 1938. It is highly, highly effective at preventing yellow fever illness and death. And it is used to protect against a vector-borne disease like yellow fever, which is carried by specific species of mosquitoes. So the point of a yellow fever card is to ensure that a traveler is protected from getting yellow fever if they travel to a place where yellow fever

is endemic. And it also ensures that a traveler doesn't necessarily get yellow fever in an endemic location and travel to a country where that mosquito is also present and introduce yellow fever into that country. That is the purpose of a yellow fever card. When we're talking about COVID-19 vaccine passports, this is a completely different scenario. Firstly, the virus is a pandemic. It is all over the world. Every single person on this earth is at risk of getting COVID-19 and maybe dying, right? Secondly, we have, as I mentioned, over I think 17 different vaccines globally available. Their efficacy in preventing severe illness from COVID-19 range from 55% to 95%. And we see that efficacy vary against new emergent variants.

So these are a lot of different factors, both scientifically and from an equitable situation of who's been able to be vaccinated on the international level. So here it could be a scenario. If the ethic is to protect those who are still vulnerable to COVID-19, then you could see a scenario that an American wanting to travel to, say, Guyana, might need to show that they're vaccinated so that they can come into the country and not put those citizens of Guyana at risk. Is it fair, though, for America to demand that a traveler from Guyana or Nigeria or Kenya or certain parts of Southeast Asia, which have had very low, level of availability to vaccines can then not travel to the U.S. I'm not sure. It adds another layer, again, of disenfranchisement and inequity by already countries that have been disproportionately impacted by serious issues in vaccine distribution. Zekiel, come back on that point of just

equity, because it's one that's resonated throughout this debate. And maybe you could just expand on it a little bit more. Here in Canada right now, as we're kind of struggling with a third wave, we're also struggling with a wave of mass inoculations. And one of the things that we're seeing is that there are communities who are challenged by virtue of their socioeconomic conditions to interact with what are unfortunately become rather complicated structures that you have to negotiate

through, technological, bureaucratic, and otherwise to access a vaccine. So why are you more confident, or maybe you're not, that vaccine passports are going to be easy, easily negotiated, easily acquired by the very groups that not only, as Natalie has pointed out, have suffered most from this virus, but are now having the greatest challenge in accessing vaccines through these complicated bureaucratic and technological systems that we have in place. First of all, I do think it's the responsibility of the government and society at large

to make sure that the hurdles for different communities to get vaccinated are. removed. I know that a large part of the time that the White House spends on this is to figure out how do we get vaccines to the communities that have had lower access. They can't navigate the internet or telephones or travel. The question is, how should we distribute a vaccine? Is it based upon population or should it be based upon risk of getting COVID in the population? We know that countries very different from Canada have much lower rates of COVID exposure, and they happen to be a lot poorer. So Canada's population is, what, 35 million people, something in that range. I don't know the latest data for how many cumulative cases or daily cases you have in Canada,

but let's suffice it to say, it's a lot, right? Ghana, 30 million people, very few cases, very few deaths, and it's not because they're under testing. Even if we multiplied the number of cases they have and the number of deaths they have by 10 for testing, we know that talking to the hospitals there, talking to the morgue there, they just don't have a lot of COVID, and it's not because they haven't been exposed to COVID. We don't know what that difference is. We don't know why it's less in places like Ghana than it is in Canada. But Canada should have more vaccine than Ghana should.

And the reason is Canada's a hot spot now. It's having a lot of cases, a lot of exposure, and more people in Canada should be vaccinated. And I think that is what's equitable. The fact that more people in Canada have access to a vaccine than in Ghana, that is a difference, but it's not in equity because the equitable thing to do is to distribute vaccine on the basis of COVID need, the number of people dying, the economic impact, not on the basis of. population, which is an arbitrary number. We don't distribute HIV drugs on the basis of population. We distribute it on the basis of HIV need. Similarly with a vaccine. In the 1980s and 90s, it was a global problem everywhere. Are we going to get into issues around equity in the 80s and 90s in HIV? I mean, I think this is. And the equity issue then was to distribute

antiretrovirals on the basis of HIV burden, not on the basis of population. I think we have to be really careful with statements like right now Ghana seems okay. Canada was looking really good about six months ago. You know, we were looking great. And new variants emerge and the entire story changed for our country. So these things can change really quickly. And I think we have to be considerate too that this isn't just a distribution issue. Like someone can just go choose and be like, okay, send $30 million here and send $10 million

over there. This is a huge issue back to my same opening, my opening remarks around how systems are built and how we then layer on additional inequity on those systems. So this is an issue around ownership, on IP licensing, on distribution, on histories of colonialism and imperialism that has totally disrupted the economies and the ability for certain countries to grow. And how we're going to say, after you've had all these sorts of things that have already, impacted your ability to deal with this global pandemic. Now we're going to put this passport on you that means you can't leave your borders, but we won't let your vaccines into your borders. And I think this is something we have to be very, very, very careful about. It is not cut and dry.

And I think we have to think about this when we're talking about implementation at a global level. Well, it's a little weird, Natalie, the fact that in Canada, the Canadians are really upset that there's not more vaccine. I don't think it's a matter of colonialism, imperialism, in Canada. It's a matter of historical investment by Canada, by the Netherlands, by other countries that don't have high levels of vaccine, certainly in the rich part, in vaccine, research, development, production. I couldn't agree with you more. The world needs a lot more investment in production, capacity, in distribution of these very effective vaccines. I am 100% in agreement. And I've been advocating that all the way to the start.

That has a whole separate issue from the need for vaccine passports. And I think it just muddies the water of we need to have a way of certifying who's gotten the vaccine so that we can have safe activities and open up with the least restrictive means various parts of the economy. That's been a sacred public health principle. And now suddenly people want to say, oh, let's throw that principle out. for a variety of reasons, none of which are actually going to enhance the freedom of more people. Let's, before we go to closing statements, we've got to talk about the privacy aspect of this,

because there's, I think, part of the concern here is how these passports are actually organized, to what extent data is being shared, who is accessing that data, and the role possibly of corporations, including big tech, in the delivery of a national vaccine, passport strategy. Natalie, what are your thoughts on that and what are your possibly your specific concerns about how people negotiate their own privacy needs vis-a-vis the public good, the public need to wrestle this pandemic to the ground? Yeah, I mean, so I think we have to be clear, too, that, you know, no one is arguing that there shouldn't be records of vaccination. Like, everyone needs to have access to their record of vaccination so they know when they were

vaccinated, what vaccine it was, when to get their follow-up booster, and whether they're still protected as new variants emerge. What we're seeing, though, is the movement of variety of private entities and governments developing what most case are digital forms of storing those records and then using that, you know, digital record of your vaccination to then be able to access different parts of society. That's where the passport steps in is when it's you're allowed to access or not. So this becomes a challenge. on several levels. One is that now people, which is great, people should be empowered to have control over their personal health data and be able to use that as ways that can allow for their

movement through the world to be more easeful. But the issue is that people are then also maybe sharing that data in ways that they're not aware of. Companies are able to then use that data in ways that are not protected because much of this would fall out of existing sort of HIPAA regulation that oversees patient privacy. And the second thing, getting back to the equity issue is that we might have a scenario. I think right now there's over 15 different companies pitching vaccine, passport, platforms and apps in the U.S. So you could have a huge interoperability issue where you have, you know,

a person needs like six or seven different apps on their phone to go do different things or they're uploading their vaccine to say American Airlines and then uploading it to the MBA and Ticketmaster. So it's going all over the place. If you have to pay for these apps, we then have a. another issue of accessibility. And if it also requires smartphones, that's another issue of accessibility. And then the last thing I want to bring up, these will be monitored somehow, right? Someone is going to be monitoring people's vaccination status. This is highly likely to happen.

And we know what happens when people get monitored for different status. It disproportionately impacts communities of color. A hundred percent, like this is not. this is known, both in Canada and the United States. So I think we also have to be very careful, not only about privacy, but how these different programs are going to be monitored and policed. Thanks, Natalie. So, Ezekiel, what's your take on the privacy concerns about this, the role of technology and corporate impulses here to both open the economy? They want the economy open, but they also want different ways for me to give them my data because they mine it and they make money off it. Let me make four points. First, it's quite clear we've moved off of whether we should

have this to how we should do it. And I totally agree. And I think my opening statement before Natalie said a single word, or you said a single word, I said, the issue is how. And we have three major challenges to address. And I think my second challenge was we don't want to have our privacy violated and we don't want our information commercialized. And I absolutely think that's a cardinal principle these things have to adhere to. Second, I am upset and I voice my being upset that the U.S. government isn't going to do the vaccine passport. It's going to let the private sector do it for all the reasons that Natalie has raised, which is we don't want the four profits. We don't trust them with our data. They lie all the time about how they're combining the data and whether they're

adhering to them. I mean, Facebook is repeatedly, oh, we're not going to do this privacy thing. And then suddenly they've done that privacy thing. And I think more than the privacy issue, I think it's a commercialization issue. The fact that our information is going to leave us open to being exploited. And I fully agree, we need 100% protection. I think having a governmentally sanctioned, but not for profit entity that actually does this and we're assured. But, Ezekiel, you're not doing that in the United States. So is that the reason not to have vaccine passports? Because you don't have the right policy framework in place to deliver. these things equitably with the requisite transparency and privacy that your citizens rightly demand?

No, I think we're going to soon see some rules and regulations about what can be done. I do think that the third problem of not having a governmentally sanctioned but not-for-profit entity oversee this is what Natalie points out the multiplicity and lack of interoperability and the problem. So I couldn't agree more. But those, let's first. Let's focus. focus on the right issue. Doing this correctly, doing this to reduce discrimination, reduce commercialization, and make it easy to use, not debating as our topic was whether or why we should have this, but let's get it right. We're going to have them. It's inevitable. And we should just get on with doing it correctly.

Thank you. Zecchio. Let's go to closing statements. Our resolution today has been, be it resolved. Vaccine passports are necessary to start. stop the spread of COVID-19 and safely reopen the economy. Natalie, you've been arguing against our motion today. Let's have your concluding remarks. I want to just echo my, what I said in the opening remarks, is that skipping past the should is a really dangerous precedent. And I do think that we can think about ways that this can be engineered and designed to

reduce equity, inequity issues, to reduce risk to discrimination, to reduce risk to privacy, and that is possible. But part of that includes the question of where should these be used and for what purposes, right? Yes, maybe you should have to have proof of vaccination, as I mentioned, to work in high-risk settings or to protect those most vulnerable like children who cannot be vaccinated. But I do still think there's a real need to have the question of the how this gets used and at what level and in what parts of our society. So what I really want to push for is, moving away from sort of this top-down approach of this is ethical or this is not ethical. We've decided it's ethical.

So let's just go figure out how to do this to really thinking about how do you actually incorporate the communities and the individuals that are most largely going to be impacted by these policies into the design of the should and the how. And that is something that we don't see often enough, something we need to really think about. And because I can be a pragmatist too, Zique. You might not believe it. But, you know, we can think all about the house, but the question is who's deciding the house, right? Is it the same people like Zika and I who get a benefit from the status quo and get, you know, get vaccinated and move through the society or is the people that are going to be harmed if this isn't done right?

And so I think we have to be very careful at looking at what situations this gets used in. And then you move on to the engineering questions of how to, you know, protect privacy, how to make it more accessible on a technology platform. But never forgetting how does this get monitored and making sure that those can be kept safe. people can be kept safe also by the enforcement of these rules. Thank you, Natalie. We're going to give Ezekiel the last word in our debate, be it resolved vaccine passports, are necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19

and safely reopen the economy. Ezekiel, wrap up this debate for us. We all agree that you will need certification of vaccines for a variety of activities, whether it's to work in high-risk settings, whether it's to work in food, whether it's to be an essential worker, whether it's to travel.

And then the question is, how do we make sure those certifications are done? So they don't exploit people. They're not discriminatory. They are not commercialized. And so we're not exploited by them. And they're easy to use and don't impose additional burdens on the most vulnerable in the community. I think all of those are important factors.

But it doesn't get to the fundamental thing that these are inevitable. They're inevitable, especially to open up. activities like entertainment, hospitality, and other communal activities that are really important, both for the economy and frankly for our mental health, and that we have long had policies of vaccine certification, and we're simply adapting those to the new 21st century and COVID. And now let's focus in on the how of doing this to make sure that we don't ethically trip up when we have to do these vaccine certifications or passports. Thank you both, both for the spirit that you've engaged in this debate, which has been spirited at times, and we appreciate that here at the Monk Debates community, but also just more importantly, bringing to us your considerable experience, knowledge and engagement with this really important issue. We're all kind of coming out of this debate, I think, with some really fascinating questions to think about, both practical and ethical, and that's to the credit of both of you being willing to engage with each other. So on behalf of the Monk Debates community, Natalie, Ezekiel,

Thanks for coming on the program. While that wraps up today's debate, I want to thank our participants, Ezekiel and Natalie. They certainly gave us a lot to think about. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard, please send me an email at podcast at monkdebates.com. That's monk with a k, debates with an s.com. Here's a note from Noah about our latest weekly members-only podcast. Hi, Redyard.

I too found your story about the collapse of soccer's new Super League. interesting. In the spirit of the monk debates, however, I would like to have heard more of an opposing viewpoint, supportive of the new league. I'm also interested in hearing the arguments and evidence against paid sick days in countries and regions struck by COVID-19. Is opposition to paid sick days a cost issue? Are paid sick days likely to be abused by people who are faking being sick? I'm not sure if this is a one-dimensional issue or if there are other more complex ways of expressing various arguments for and against paid sick days. Hey, thanks for that.

No one, and thanks for catching our Monk members-only podcast on Fridays. For those of you listening, the Monk members podcast is free. Monk membership is also free. To access both, go to our website, www.munkdebates.com, forward slash, membership. Well, the Monk Debates is that special place for civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day.

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