British Airways Is Streamlining Travel With Health Passports

[PGSan]

On 2/5/2021 at 7:17 AM, ignis said:

what happens to people in the vulnerable group but cannot have the vaccine ?

They remain vulnerable, I guess.

[GroveHillWanderer]

On 2/4/2021 at 2:34 PM, richard_smith237 said:

That said: I am of the understanding that the Vaccines do not kill the SARS-CoV-2, they simply limit the body’s response to the vaccine such that the person either does not develop the Covid-19 disease, or they suffer reduced / lesser symptoms.

You are right that the vaccines do not kill the virus but that's because no vaccine ever does.

 

All a vaccine does is train your body's own immune system to respond more rapidly and more robustly to the virus (or other pathogen) when it encounters it. Your immune system is what then does the work of preventing the virus from replicating inside your body. (Technically speaking, viruses cannot be killed, since they are never alive in the first place).

 

In the case of the vaccines that we have "real world" data for (Pfizer and AstraZeneca) the results from millions of vaccinees have already been analysed, and show that one dose reduces the risk of infection by more than 70 percent, rising to 85 percent after the second dose.

 

Covid vaccines level of protection

 

Phase 3 clinical trial data for the Moderna vaccine is even better - it showed 89.6 percent of asymptomatic and symptomatic cases were prevented by the first dose.

 

Covid-19 vaccine - what can you do safely?

[placnx]

On 2/5/2021 at 10:11 AM, FarFlungFalang said:

I agree he is rather a fan of the AZ vaccines but he states his reasons as being ease of transportation,storage and price all of which seem valid arguments.I don't always agree with everything he says but as you say he does give some nice updates.I think the Sputnik vaccine suffers largely from "cold war syndrome" and probably doesn't get the same consideration and attention as those of the west and the same would apply to the Chinese vaccines for various reasons some maybe valid some maybe not valid but probably mostly due to trust.

Finally my last sentence was addressing richard_smith237's view that my reasons for not requiring vaccines prior to travelling were selfish which I denied and say that my reason for rejecting the proposal that vaccines should be required before being able to travel.

Then would you accept going in to quarantine?

[Negita43]

"Anyone who can afford international travel can afford a cell phone (a basic cell phone can be purchased for $100) - thus an App on a phone makes perfect sense. "

 

That's true but your statement ignores all the privacy issues associated with cellphones - or perhaps you agree that your location, personal information and access to a bank acount is fair game to anyone (including governments). 

Sad to say people who do not have cell phones (by choice or otherwise) are becoming second class citizens,

[FarFlungFalang]

14 hours ago, placnx said:

Then would you accept going in to quarantine?

Under what circumstances?If it can be proven that vaccines are 100% effective in stopping transmission there might be a cases for allowing vaccinated people entry  without quarantine.Generally I'm against quarantine.I don't believe most of the restrictions are warranted.

[placnx]

13 hours ago, Negita43 said:

"Anyone who can afford international travel can afford a cell phone (a basic cell phone can be purchased for $100) - thus an App on a phone makes perfect sense. "

 

That's true but your statement ignores all the privacy issues associated with cellphones - or perhaps you agree that your location, personal information and access to a bank acount is fair game to anyone (including governments). 

Sad to say people who do not have cell phones (by choice or otherwise) are becoming second class citizens,

If we want to stop Covid we have to go well beyond people with smartphones. Anyway, it's not necessary for the traveler to have an app. Do it the other way around: The people who vaccinate, check your status, have apps to check your QR code printed on a physical card and/or in your passport.

[placnx]

3 hours ago, FarFlungFalang said:

Under what circumstances?If it can be proven that vaccines are 100% effective in stopping transmission there might be a cases for allowing vaccinated people entry  without quarantine.Generally I'm against quarantine.I don't believe most of the restrictions are warranted.

Quarantine would be appropriate for people who cannot get vaccinated, for example. Anyway, testing would be the minimum.

[FarFlungFalang]

1 hour ago, placnx said:

Quarantine would be appropriate for people who cannot get vaccinated, for example. Anyway, testing would be the minimum.

I disagree and my reason is that it would be interesting to see if the same criteria for testing and counting the numbers were to be applied to a bad flu season and how they would compare and see if the same level of fear could be raised  and then the same restrictions and need for vaccinations and lockdowns and mask wearing etc to be applied to protect the vulnerable.My main concern is that this has been a tad over blown and the situation has been taken advantage of by various parties.It will be interesting to see what happens with the next particularly virulent flu strain and season.  

[placnx]

20 minutes ago, FarFlungFalang said:

I disagree and my reason is that it would be interesting to see if the same criteria for testing and counting the numbers were to be applied to a bad flu season and how they would compare and see if the same level of fear could be raised  and then the same restrictions and need for vaccinations and lockdowns and mask wearing etc to be applied to protect the vulnerable.My main concern is that this has been a tad over blown and the situation has been taken advantage of by various parties.It will be interesting to see what happens with the next particularly virulent flu strain and season.  

More people in the US (500,000+) have died than American soldiers in Vietnam, WWII & WWI combined. This figure is around 10 times the number of annual flu fatalities in the US. You sound like Trump as Covid started affecting the US. Eventually he changed his tune. 

 

People who genuinely cannot be vaccinated should be able to get a document in lieu of the "passport".

[Puccini]

On 2/26/2021 at 6:14 AM, jonnyscot said:

Hopefully this vaccination passport gathers momentum, due to my frequent travels to some godforsaken $h_tholes I already carry a vaccination passport containing my vaccination history covering some country entry requirements such as yellow fever etc,,, so it’s not really something new, but I’d certainly welcome it, especially if it meant possibly a reduction or elimination in quarantine time 

What is this vaccination passport you already have called?

[treetops]

3 minutes ago, Puccini said:

What is this vaccination passport you already have called?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Certificate_of_Vaccination_or_Prophylaxis

 

is the oft used one.

[richard_smith237]

On 3/3/2021 at 1:37 PM, PGSan said:

On 2/5/2021 at 3:17 AM, ignis said:

what happens to people in the vulnerable group but cannot have the vaccine ?

They remain vulnerable, I guess.

 

The become protected by the herd immunity of everyone else having taken the vaccine, such that no one near them (or far fewer people around them) are contagious with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. 

[richard_smith237]

22 hours ago, Negita43 said:

"Anyone who can afford international travel can afford a cell phone (a basic cell phone can be purchased for $100) - thus an App on a phone makes perfect sense. "

 

That's true but your statement ignores all the privacy issues associated with cellphones - or perhaps you agree that your location, personal information and access to a bank acount is fair game to anyone (including governments). 

Sad to say people who do not have cell phones (by choice or otherwise) are becoming second class citizens,

 

A lot of people complaining about the privacy have social medial accounts, facebook, TikTok etc etc...  I know many posters on this forum who don’t want a smart phone won’t have social media and its unfortunate that they are forced to enter the modern era with a phone. 

BUT... that same person who insists they don’t want a Smart Phone doesn’t need to worry about privacy issues, because they won’t put personal information on the phone, they won’t use mobile Banking, they wont use it for messaging etc... they will simply put that one single ‘Health Passport App’ on their phone which will be used only as an electronic passport for international travel (in the British Airways sense of this thread) - as soon as they are in their destination country they can turn it off.

 

Of course, if a nation insists on a an App on a Smart phone for track and trace purposes (i.e. like the Thailand Plus app) that is a choice an individual is going to have to make before they chose to travel to a foreign country.

 

IF such Apps become a requisite for track and trace for all domestic citizens of a nation then privacy may come into it, there is a risk, but really, people can be tracked and traced already with a standard ‘dumb cell phone (older nokia etc), so the paranoid person who doesn’t want to be ‘tracked’ is already a little late with their concerns. 

 

 

 

[FarFlungFalang]

13 hours ago, placnx said:

More people in the US (500,000+) have died than American soldiers in Vietnam, WWII & WWI combined. This figure is around 10 times the number of annual flu fatalities in the US. You sound like Trump as Covid started affecting the US. Eventually he changed his tune. 

 

People who genuinely cannot be vaccinated should be able to get a document in lieu of the "passport".

Why bring Trump into the argument?Thailand has an average of 3000 seasonal flu deaths and they had 80 covid deaths so the flu is 37 times deadlier than covid! In Australia in 2019 they had 310,000 documented flu cases and only 29000 cases of Sars Cov 2 infections.You can play numbers all day if you want.

Edited March 4, 2021 by FarFlungFalang

[FarFlungFalang]

14 hours ago, placnx said:

More people in the US (500,000+) have died than American soldiers in Vietnam, WWII & WWI combined. This figure is around 10 times the number of annual flu fatalities in the US. You sound like Trump as Covid started affecting the US. Eventually he changed his tune. 

 

People who genuinely cannot be vaccinated should be able to get a document in lieu of the "passport".

An interesting article just posted in another thread indicating obesity being a big factor in covid deaths.So maybe being obese is the problem and not covid.

A quote from the article.

"Strikingly, the authors said, there is no example of a country where people are generally not overweight or obese having high COVID-19 death rates."

 

 

 

 

[placnx]

7 hours ago, FarFlungFalang said:

Why bring Trump into the argument?Thailand has an average of 3000 seasonal flu deaths and they had 80 covid deaths so the flu is 37 times deadlier than covid! In Australia in 2019 they had 310,000 documented flu cases and only 29000 cases of Sars Cov 2 infections.You can play numbers all day if you want.

Australia and Thailand, fortunately, have had success in avoiding the typical Covid onslaught, so neither is a good candidate for comparing flu and Covid.

[FarFlungFalang]

16 hours ago, placnx said:

Australia and Thailand, fortunately, have had success in avoiding the typical Covid onslaught, so neither is a good candidate for comparing flu and Covid.

Unfortunately America has high rates of obesity and didn't handle covid so well so it's not a candidate for comparing flu and Covid.So you see it's all about how covid is counted and tested in Thailand they have a policy of only testing symptomatic cases therefore only symptomatic cases are counted in America anyone who tests positive is counted so depending on how the numbers are recorded is what determines the severity.You can choose what numbers to believe but you have no way of knowing if those number are a true representation or not, you are merely choosing what to believe.

[jonnyscot]

It’s more of a personal safety logbook that I have with entries for vaccination updates, and work related certification, 

I do also have a yellow colored international certificate of vaccinations (WHO approved) which I obtained at a travel vaccination clinic in Bangkok a few years back

Edited March 11, 2021 by jonnyscot