Brave new world of immunity

It's spring 2021. You have just sat through an hour-long interview for your dream job. The vibe is good, and you're pretty sure you crushed it. Yes, you have a work authorization, and of course you're willing to move to the city of X to take the gig. But before you walk out, your future boss asks one last question: "Do you have your COVID-19 immunity certificate?"

You don't, because the antibody test you took months ago turned up negative.

"Oh," she says, "well, I'm very sorry but, in that case, we can't move forward with your application. A shame, but do keep in touch and let us know when you have an immunity certification, ok?"

As societies around the world move cautiously towards reopening their economies without the benefit of a coronavirus vaccine that confers widespread immunity, dystopian scenes like this one aren't that far-fetched. Chile has already issued the world's first "immunity card." Governments in France, the UK, and the city of Los Angeles have floated the idea too.

If businesses are concerned about the health and economic impacts of the disease spreading in the workplace — or to clients and customers — bosses will be keenly interested to know if employees have immunity to COVID-19. That opens up several important problems.

We don't know enough about immunity. The WHO has warned that there still isn't enough evidence that people who have had COVID-19 develop long-lasting immunity to it. There may be more evidence in the coming months as experts monitor antibodies in people who have recovered, but concern about short-lived or lapsed immunity will become a challenge for any certificate system.

Oversight and responsibility. Developing a credible and standardized proof of immunity is not only an immense healthcare challenge, but also a political one. Who issues them and under what privacy conditions? A national immunity "passport" is potentially an option for countries with centralized political systems and high levels of trust in government. But it's hard to imagine something like that working in the US, for example, where opposition even to a national ID card has always been strong, from groups on both the left and right concerned about privacy and government overreach.

The Brave New World problem. Just as the world of Aldous Huxley's famous novel divided people into different, color-coded professional castes, a situation where some people have COVID immunity certificates and others don't could quickly split the labor force into people who can easily find jobs and those who can't.

There's a historical precedent for this: in 19th century New Orleans, the yellow fever immunity card requirements quickly amplified class and racial divides. Back here in the 21st century, with unemployment rates soaring around the world as a result of lockdowns, anything that makes it harder for people to find work is going to become politically contentious, and fast.

Perverse incentives. Lastly, given the high stakes of proving immunity, will non-immune people try to counterfeit certificates, endangering their future co-workers and customers? Worse, will people feel pressured to contract the virus just to develop the immunity that will help them find a job?

More from GZERO Media

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with Democratic Republic of the Congo's Foreign Minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner and Rwanda's Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe on June 27, 2025.
REUTERS

On June 27, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda signed a US-mediated peace accord in Washington, D.C., to end decades of violence in the DRC’s resource-rich Great Lakes region. The agreement commits both nations to cease hostilities, withdraw troops, and to end support for armed groups operating in eastern Congowithin 90 days.

What if the next virus isn’t natural, but deliberately engineered and used as a weapon? As geopolitical tensions rise and biological threats become more complex, health security and life sciences are emerging as critical pillars of national defense. In the premiere episode of “The Ripple Effect: Investing in Life Sciences”, leading experts explore the dual-use nature of biotechnology and the urgent need for international oversight, genetic attribution standards, and robust viral surveillance.

A woman lights a cigarette placed in a placard depicting Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, during a demonstration, after the Hungarian parliament passed a law that bans LGBTQ+ communities from holding the annual Pride march and allows a broader constraint on freedom of assembly, in Budapest, Hungary, on March 25, 2025.
REUTERS/Marton Monus

Hungary’s capital will proceed with Saturday’s Pride parade celebrating the LGBTQ+ community, despite the rightwing national government’s recent ban on the event.