Sunday, March 7, 2021

What Medical Privacy?

Look, requiring a certificate of presumed immunity to COVID (and hoped-for non-transmissability thereof) makes sense in certain situations. I'd definitely feel much more comfortable eating in a public area/exercising in an enclosed space/riding public transit/flying anywhere if I knew that everyone else sharing my air was either vaccinated against or recovered from COVID. 

But still, I feel like some medical-privacy line is being crossed, and that feeling only got stronger once I actually saw my Israeli-issued vaccination certificate (yes I blurred the document, and yes I got my second dose yay!!!):

It's valid starting a week after my second dose of the COVID vaccine, and expires six months after that. And what I didn't blur is what really sets the weird precedent. Look at the details of a medical procedure that I underwent! It's just... Weird.

Out of curiosity, I searched around to find out what a Recovery Certificate looks like. Those are valid immediately upon recovery from COVID, and current policy is that all Recovery Certificates have a blanket expiration date of June, 30, 2021. At some point before June 30th, the government will figure out what the law will actually be for bearers of this recovery certificate. (And if the past year has taught me nothing else, it's that "at some point before June 30th" will most likely be June 29th after 9 pm, and more likely after 11 pm.) Here's an example from the internet:


Still feels like a breach of medical privacy, doesn't it?

That's presumably why Israel also issues a general "Probably Not a Bearer of the Plague" Certificate, useful within Israel in lieu of both the Vaccination Certificate and the Recovery Certificate:


This "Green Passport" is just my ID number, an expiration date, and a QR code. Hmmm... I wonder what happens if I scan the code? Well, I'm not about to install the software to find out for sure, but per a Health Ministry press release, the QR code is purely a security measure to prevent forgeries, and scanning it with the correct Ministry of Health software should display the same information that's already on the Green Passport. 

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As long as I'm posting, I'd like you to know that I have drafts of three blog posts from fairly recently, all of which are more fun (=less plague-y) that this one. 

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