Vaccine Passports and Mandates: An Interdisciplinary Critique
by Dr. Oliver Robinson At the end of 2020 and in the early months of 2021, I wrote an interdisciplinary review of lockdown policies, which looked at the evidence and arguments from biomedical, socio-economic, psychological and ethical perspectives. I was at the time surprised by the amount of research about lockdowns that was monolithically focused on COVID-19 outcomes while ignoring of all the potential collateral damage, and was sure that a more holistic take was necessary. My article was put through peer-review, accepted in July 2021 and finally published in late 2021. You can read it here. Now that vaccine passports and mandates have become the latest frontier in the Covid debate, blinkered monolithic thinking is being shown in political and media discourse, just as happened with lockdowns earlier in the pandemic. Accordingly, here I present an interdisciplinary critique of these measures, taking into account biomedical, social, psychological and ethical perspectives. In relation to my attitudes to vaccines per se – I am vaccinated against COVID-19, and my daughter has had all her standard childhood vaccinations to date. I am fully supportive of vaccines as an elective and informed choice. The biomedical perspective – transmission and serious illness The main argument for vaccine passports is that COVID-19 vaccines reduce transmission, therefore being in an environment in which only vaccinated individuals...