The push for vaccine passports ignores the arguments raging around them | Zoe Williams

Boris Johnson's passport plan sets the vaxxers against the anti-vaxxers without necessarily making anything safer

Vaccinations are the high point of human reason. Devised under clinical conditions by scientists interested only in what works, they represent the mastery of the rational world over chaotic nature; and also, of course, they save lives. Vaccine passports, then, should in theory be no more than the rubber stamp of reason. So why does the policy, not to mention the discussion surrounding it, look so irrational?

In late July, shortly after nightclubs had reopened for the first time in over a year, Boris Johnson appeared to go against his previous approach - let's call it, for brevity, loosey goosey" - and announced a plan to make full vaccination the condition of entry" to nightclubs and other crowded indoor events. The prime minister didn't have the experience of Boardmasters, the Cornish festival in mid-August, which seeded so many Covid infections that the county, had it been abroad, would have been placed on the red list. Yet he did have that data by this week, when he restated this intention.