At the crux of digital health pass challenges: Inequity

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Lori C., a graphic designer at a college in the San Diego area, was diagnosed with autoimmune progesterone dermatitis five years ago. When this rare disease flares up, she says she looks like “a burn victim” with severe blisters, scales, hives, and rashes—even on her gums and inside her throat. After a decade of fighting it, it causes her body to have extreme reactions to any changes in hormone levels or immune response.

Because vaccines directly affect her immune system, and medical professionals don’t know what caused the disease to strike her in the first place, she’s under doctor’s orders to avoid all vaccines.  That includes common vaccines such as the annual flu shot, as well as Covid-19 vaccines.

And yet Lori, whose full name The Parallax has agreed to not publish, is hopeful that the developers of digital health passes, or “vaccine passports,” will take into consideration people like her, who likely will never get a Covid-19 vaccine, and instead will have to take regular tests to determine whether they have contracted the disease.

“If I knew I was going to a location that allowed people to use vaccine passports, I’d be much more comfortable going out. If I was going to a place where everyone was vaccinated except for people like myself, I’d be much more comfortable being out as somebody who’s vulnerable but wearing a mask,” she says. “It’s too risky to go out now because you never know who’s vaccinated or not, or who’s going to cough in your face on purpose.”