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Barcoding Americans: Is White House planning to use QR codes to verify vaccination status?

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By Jenny Goldsberry

A CBS reporter grilled White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients on vaccine QR codes during a press conference Thursday. This comes as more businesses across the nation began requiring proof of vaccination.

“Now that more entities are requiring more vaccines, is the administration reconsidering something like a QR code or a passport to help verify people’s vaccination status?” the reporter asked. “And if not, what are you doing to stop the proliferation of fake vaccine cards?”

“There are a number of ways people can demonstrate their vaccination status,” Zients replied. “Companies and organizations and the government are taking different approaches. We applaud this innovation.”

However, he was clear that the White House will not get involved in creating vaccination QR codes. “There will be no federal vaccination database,” Zients said. “As with all other vaccines the data gets held at the state and local level.”

Yet he didn’t dismiss the idea entirely, suggesting that local entities could test it out. Zients himself said he would support it as long as it met “key standards, including affordability, being available both digitally and on paper and importantly protecting people’s privacy and security.”

On the other hand, when it comes to fraudulent vaccination cards, he had much stronger words. “We are aware of some causes of fraud. Counterfeit COVID-19 cards being advertised on social media sites and e-commerce platforms,” Zients said. “While the practice is not widespread I will remind everyone that it’s a crime. The office of the Inspector General the Department of Health and Human Services is investigating these schemes.”

Meanwhile, San Fransisco’s Mayor London Breed announced that customers at high-contact indoor businesses will be required to share their vaccination status.

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism.

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Former Harvard medical professor says he was fired for opposing Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates

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“My hope is that someday, Harvard will find its way back to academic freedom and independence.” That is the heartfelt message from Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a former Harvard University professor of medicine since 2003, who recently announced publicly he was fired for “clinging to the truth” in his opposition to Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

Kulldorff posted the news on social media alongside an essay published in the City Journal last week. The epidemiologist and biostatistician also spoke with National Review about the incident. Kulldorff says he was fired by the Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham hospital system and put on a leave of absence by Harvard Medical School in November 2021 over his stance on Covid.

Nearly two years later, in October 2023, his leave of absence was terminated as a matter of policy, marking the end of his time at the university. Harvard severed ties with Kulldorff “all on their initiative,” he said.

The history of the medical professional’s public stance on Covid-19 vaccines and mandates is detailed by National Review:

Censorship and rejection led Kulldorff to co-author the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020 alongside Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University. Together, the three public-health scientists argued for limited and targeted Covid-19 restrictions that “protect the elderly, while letting children and young adults live close to normal lives,” as Kulldorff put it in his essay.

“The declaration made clear that no scientific consensus existed for school closures and many other lockdown measures. In response, though, the attacks intensified—and even grew slanderous,” he wrote, naming former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins as the one who ordered a “devastating published takedown” of the declaration.

Testifying before Congress in January, Collins reaffirmed his previous statements attacking the Great Barrington Declaration.

Despite the coordinated effort against it, the document has over 939,000 signatures in favor of age-based focused protection.

The Great Barrington Declaration’s authors, who advocated the quick reopening of schools, have been vindicated by recent studies that confirm pandemic-era school closures were, in fact, detrimental to student learning. The data show that students from third through eighth grade who spent most of the 2020–21 school year in remote learning fell more than half a grade behind in math scores on average, while those who attended school in person dropped a little over a third of a grade, according to a New York Times review of existing studies. In addition to learning losses, school closures did very little to stop the spread of Covid, studies show.

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