COVID passports: discrimination, inequality and coercion

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted intrusive, demanding, and expensive lockdowns. Vaccine passports are seen as key to lockdown exit strategies: they reduce the risk of restoring liberties and incentivise vaccination. However, they might also reinforce existing inequality: those who are already disadvantaged are less likely to be vaccinated, and so less likely to have access to the advantages provided by a vaccine passport. Furthermore, depending on the benefits attached to having a vaccine passport, their use as an incentive may be coercive, and unequally so - for some, they may be an offer that cannot be refused. Coercion is sometimes justified, and the Covid pandemic may be a situation in which it is. Governments should set the benefits of vaccine passports at a level that does not over-ride autonomy, or explicitly compel vaccination. Either alternative would be less discriminatory than the surreptitious and uneven compulsion provided by wide-ranging domestic vaccine passports.