United Arab Emirates: Xerox Emirates has partnered with V-Health Passport Ltd to launch a COVID passport & ID platform.

It uses an ID system which displays various health information, as well as other items such as boarding pass, travel & event tickets.

[1.6.3] It is true that in the post-pandemic era, personal health and well-being will become a much greater priority for society, which is why the genie of tech surveillance will not be put back into the bottle. But it is for those who govern and each of us personally to control and harness the benefits of technology without sacrificing our individual and collective values and freedoms.

[2.1.4] Companies will not necessarily adhere to these measures because they are genuinely “good”, but rather because the “price” of not doing so will be too high in terms of the wrath of activists, both activist investors and social activists.

[3.1.1] Psychologists tell us that cognitive closure often calls for black-and-white thinking and simplistic solutions – a terrain propitious for conspiracy theories and the propagation of rumours, fake news, mistruths and other pernicious ideas. In such a context, we look for leadership, authority and clarity, meaning that the question as to whom we trust (within our immediate community and among our leaders) becomes critical. In consequence, so too does the countervailing issue of whom we distrust. In conditions of stress, the appeal of cohesion and unity increases, which leads us to coalesce around our clan or our group, and to generally become more sociable within it, but not behind it. It seems only natural that our sense of vulnerability and fragility increases, as does our dependence on those around us, as for a baby or a frail person. Our attachment to those close to us strengthens, with a renewed sense of appreciation for all those we love: family and friends. But there is a darker side to this. It also triggers a rise in patriotic and nationalist sentiments, with troubling religious and ethnic considerations also coming into the picture. In the end, this toxic mix gets the worst of us as a social group. Orhan Pamuk (the Turkish author who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006 and whose latest novel,Nights of Plague, is due to be published at the end of 2020) recounts how people have always responded to epidemics by spreading rumours and false information and portraying the disease as foreign and brought in with malicious intent.

This attitude leads us to look for a scapegoat – the commonality of all outbreaks throughout history – and is the reason why “unexpected and uncontrollable outbursts of violence, hearsay, panic and rebellion are common in accounts of plague epidemics from the Renaissance on”. [144] Pamuk adds: “The history and literature of plagues shows us that the intensity of the suffering, of the fear of death, of the metaphysical dread, and of the sense of the uncanny experienced by the stricken populace will also determine the depth of their anger and political discontent.”

[3.1.2] ... the decision to wear a mask or not has become politically charged since it is considered as an infringement to personal freedom. But behind the political declaration, refusing to wear a mask in public is a moral choice, as indeed is the decision to wear one. Does this tell us something about the moral principles that underpin our choices and decisions? Probably yes.

... at a global level, if viewed in terms of the percentage of the global population effected, the corona crisis is (so far) one of the least deadly pandemics the world has experience over the last 2000 years.

In all likelihood, unless the pandemic evolves in an unforeseen way, the consequences of COVID-19 in terms of health and mortality will be mild compared to previous pandemics. At the end of June 2020 (at a time when the outbreak is still raging in Latin America, South Asia and much of the US), COVID-19 has killed less than 0.006% of the world population. To put this low figure into context in terms of lethality, the Spanish flu killed 2.7% of the world’s population and HIV/AIDS 0.6% (from 1981 to today).

The transhumanist and Israeli Yuval Noah Harari who spoke in Davos 2020, "The whole idea that people have a soul, a spirit, a free will, ... that's over!"

The treats are made with mouse tissue grown from stem cells in a food-grade bioreactor on a vegan medium, Falconer explained. No mice were killed to make the treats, but scientists had to take cells from the ears of donor mice to get started.