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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, Touché) by DannyB on Tuesday August 24 2021, @02:20PM (5 children)
Try this one on for size.
From Fox News:
Mississippi orders coronavirus-infected individuals to isolate at home or face up to 5 years in prison [foxnews.com]
Mississippi's daily new cases are the highest they've been during the pandemic
But what about people's right to go out unvaccinated and unmasked so they can spread covid-19 to everyone else? It is their right! They should be permitted to cough, spit and sneeze on others deliberately with impunity. Don't tread on them!
Can't they just say they aren't infected? With their dying breath they can say it's just the
fluflueflew.To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 24 2021, @02:29PM
It aren't no flue - this here is allergies.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 24 2021, @05:00PM (2 children)
Freedom ain't free, buddy. Ya gotta pay the price for my rights.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Tuesday August 24 2021, @07:33PM (1 child)
Right...and it's my right to go about my life without being infected with a deadly disease by some idiot who believes everything they see on the internet or hear on late night AM radio.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 25 2021, @01:01AM
No, see that's the "not free" part you missed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 24 2021, @11:10PM
But what about the vaccined faggots spreading coof at their gay orgies? Ever thing about them? I bet you have...