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Ticket, Passport, Blood Sample: Soon You’ll Have to Prove Your Health to Everyone
Get ready for Gattaca
On April 15, passengers bound to Tunisia from Dubai International Airport were tested for Covid-19 right in the terminal. In doing so, Emirates becomes the first airline to conduct rapid tests for passengers, providing results in 10 minutes.
This is just the beginning of the “new normal.” With a vaccine at least 12–18 months away, we’re likely to see proof of noninfection requirements to gain entry to all manner of places — for work, entry to retail stores, congregating in places of worship. Is this the key to getting back to business? The government of Chile thinks so. Chile has just become the first country to distribute “immunity cards” to get back to work. This could be the genesis of a global certification card or an “Immunity Passport,” either physical or digital, to demonstrate fitness for entry.
Remember that scene in the movie Gattaca?
The 1997 film Gattaca painted an eerie vision of a dystopian future. In the movie, corporate drones have their urine or blood tested daily prior to entering the workplace. In an early scene, the main character walks through what appears to be a typical ground floor badge-entry security channel to a corporate office. But instead of swiping a secure access card, he slides his fingertip into a groove, where the finest of needles is used to prick his skin and extract a small blood sample for testing. After quick confirmation, the employee is permitted access to the office building.
We might be headed in a similar direction.
In early April, both Amazon and Walmart announced that they’d be checking the temperatures of employees when they reported for work.
The future is now
Demonstrating proof of health is nothing new. In the United States, parents registering children for public school (K-12) must provide proof of inoculation for vaccine-preventable…
