Caplan argued that allowing people to have their freedoms returned after lockdown is the most “powerful incentive” to push the vaccine.
“If you promise people more mobility, more ability to get a job, more ability to get travel, that’s a very powerful incentive to actually achieve fuller vaccination,” Caplan told Fareed Zakaria.
The segment even began with the infamous ‘show me your papers’ scene from the movie Casablanca:
Caplan argued that Americans will “gain freedom” if a COVID certification system is enacted.
Caplan continued “Vaccine passports do require access; it’s hard to impose anything unless you are pretty sure that somebody can get a vaccine. So I think it’ll be a little while before we see this, let’s say within the U.S.”
“But there are going to be communities and areas of the country where it starts to make sense due to high availability of the vaccine to say, ‘you wanna come back to work in person? Gotta show me a vaccine certificate. You wanna go in a bar, a restaurant? Gotta show me a vaccine certificate,’” he added.
When asked about the dangers of a two tier society, and who can get access to the vaccine, Caplan stated “I think there will be some inequality in the U.S., but hopefully it’ll wash out quickly as the supplies increase very rapidly, I think they’re going to.”
Caplan predicted that “the world won’t wait for vaccine passports” until all countries are ready, and that they will be put into place regardless of whether poorer or less equipped countries can be a part of the system.
As we reported last week, New York City has unveiled a vaccine passport system in conjunction with IBM, trialling it at two sports events so far.
Covid passport systems, which we have been covering for months now, are being rapidly adopted worldwide both domestically and for international travel, despite the fact that the immunity status of vaccinations is not yet extensively known, and despite warnings that such schemes could lead to mass discrimination against those who choose not to take the shot.
