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https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/08/covid-19-vaccine-cards-why-so-big/619707/
This spring, as New York City warmed up and the local vaccination rate surged, I met my best friend for our first restaurant meal together in months. As soon as we sat down, she began rifling through her purse. "I have something for you," she told me. From her bag came a rectangle of clear, thick, double-layered plastic—the kind of display pocket that often dangles at the end of a lanyard. My friend had swiped a handful from her office's supply closet. "It's for your vaccine card," she explained. But I already knew.
When I got my first shot, in late February, I sat in the mandatory waiting area, holding my new card in one hand and my wallet in the other, trying to understand why the two objects weren't compatible. I contemplated where I should put this brand-new golden ticket, ultimately sliding the thin piece of too-large card stock into an envelope I found in my tote. I'm going to either lose this or destroy it, I thought to myself.
Indeed, I lost it—at least for a little while. Despite dutifully sliding the card into its new protective pocket after lunch with my friend, I eventually found myself tearing my apartment apart searching for it, for exactly the reasons I had feared: It was the wrong size for the one place where most people keep all their important everyday documents, and of too nebulous a purpose to sit safely in a drawer with my birth certificate and passport. Could it unlock some sort of privileges at the airport? Were restaurants going to check it? Did I need to take it to medical appointments? My card had gotten shuffled into a sandwich baggie filled with extra masks, not to be rediscovered for six weeks.
With all due respect to our country's overworked and undersupported public-health apparatus: This is dumb. The card is dumb, and it's difficult to imagine a series of intentional decisions that could have reasonably led to it as the consensus best pick. Its strangeness had been a bit less important in the past seven months, when evidence of immunity was rarely necessary to do things within America. Now, as Delta-variant cases surge and more municipalities and private businesses begin to require proof of vaccination to patronize places such as restaurants and gyms, the rubber has met the road on this flimsy de facto verification apparatus. It's not the highest-stakes question of this stage of the pandemic, but it's one that's become quite common: How did we end up with these cards?
What size are the COVID-19 vaccine ID cards in other (non-USA) countries?
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Tuesday August 24 2021, @02:07PM (3 children)
HIPPA applies only to Medical or Official Staff disclosing the contents of Medical Records, if I understand it correctly. If you choose to show someone your QR code / paper certificate that is your choice, and not something that the medical staff are responsible for. You choose to enter a restaurant, event, workplace or whatever. In France there is similar legislation and I assume it is the same in most countries.
And, in Europe at least, all the QR codes gives them is your name (to prove the code is yours), the number and dates of your vaccinations, and it checks that the QR code is itself valid. I can plaster my medical records or my QR code on a billboard. It would not be a breach of medical privacy.
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 24 2021, @02:27PM (2 children)
I work in med devices, we protect health information while also making it accessible to legitimate users, we are exhaustively trained in HIPAA - and... out in the world, I hear HIPAA used as an excuse for things it has nothing to do with 10x more than I hear actual applications of the law. Like arguing with the TSA when your flight will be closing the boarding door in 60 minutes or less, there's no point in calling out these idiots and their BS, you're more likely to put yourself in a worse state than you already are. Or: like wrestling a pig in the mud, you both get dirty - but the pig enjoys it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 24 2021, @02:48PM (1 child)
The real problem is requiring people to surrender their HIPPA protected information to people who are not bound by HIPPA.
If you want to release that information to the world, go right ahead. But it's wrong to allow companies to force you to release that information to them.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 24 2021, @06:20PM
You seem to be a little confused here. Companies may choose who they will or will not do business with at their discretion (protected classes excepted). You don't have to show them that you are vaccinated but they don't have to do business with you either. And if you know they require proof of vaccination status and you go there anyway, you're just an asshole.