"More and more locations recognize A) the virus is becoming endemic and B) fraudulent paper credentials are an ongoing issue and challenge."Not only are the paper vaccination record cards issued by the CDC easily faked, but surveys indicate that many unvaccinated Americans are willing to lie about their vaccination status to stay in college or keep their jobs. [...]
As the calendar flips to 2022, expect to see a stampede of states adopting SMART Health Cards. "The watershed moment is very much right upon us," says Brian Anderson, co-founder of the VCI and chief digital health physician at MITRE, a not-for-profit organization that provides technical guidance for the government on issues of national concern.
"We're working with approximately 20 other states that are not ready to publicly announce the issuance of these credentials, but we're working with their development teams," Anderson says, noting that most of these state apps are coming next year "in the earlier part of Q1."
This is great news, but we won't be safe until venues are able to require SMART Health QR codes and stop accepting paper cards, and photos of cards.
And that won't happen until state or local governments mandate that.
Nearly everybody who enters DNA Lounge using a QR code acquired that code while standing on our sidewalk. Everyone shows up expecting that a photo of their card will be good enough, since we are the only nightclub in town -- or possibly the country -- who do not accept photos. So the customers had no incentive to get the digital record until they arrived here.
Everyone else is at best following SFDPH's woefully inadequate recommendations, and accepting photoshop forgeries of vaccination cards. If they are checking at all. SFDPH believes that scribbling your name on someone else's vax card in Comic Sans counts as proof of vaccination.
We need to move to digital-only, and that can't happen without government mandates. Which I doubt we're going to get from people like Maskless Mayor Breed.
