HealthDay Reports: COVID 'Immunity Passports' — Not Ready for Prime Time?
Practical and ethical problems surround the idea of implementing immunity passports, experts say.
COVID 'Immunity Passports:' Not Ready for Prime Time?
MONDAY, June 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- A grieving widower played by Matt Damon flashes a shiny coded wristband for security guards to scan in the 2011 movie "Contagion."
After a quick beep and a green light, Damon is allowed into a store to buy a prom dress for his daughter.
That wristband was an "immunity passport" -- a certification of his character's immunity to the movie's deadly virus.
With fiction quickly becoming reality, immunity passports are now being touted as a means to reopen the world following COVID-19 lockdowns. But experts worry that a host of practical and ethical problems make the concept unworkable and potentially dangerous to privacy and liberty.