Apple on Tuesday seeded developers with the first betas of iOS 15.1 and iPadOS 15.1. The new updates includes the ability for iPhone users to upload their COVID-19 vaccination status to the Health app and then generate a vaccination card in Apple Wallet.
Users will soon be able to share experiences with SharePlay while connecting with friends on FaceTime, including listening to songs together with Apple Music, watching a TV show or movie from Apple TV+ and other streaming services in sync, or sharing their screen to view apps together. SharePlay works across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and with shared playback controls, anyone in a SharePlay session can play, pause, or jump ahead. SharePlay even extends to Apple TV, so users can watch shows or movies on a big screen. Disney+, ESPN+, HBO Max, Hulu, MasterClass, Paramount+, Pluto TV, TikTok, Twitch, and many others are integrating SharePlay into their apps — creating entirely new ways to connect.
If beta testing goes well, SharePlay be launched in iOS 15.1.
The Apple Wallet vaccination card can be shown to businesses, venues, restaurants, and more that are requiring vaccines for entry.
As outlined in an announcement to developers, verifiable health records are based on the SMART Health Cards specification. California is using SMART Health Cards, so users in California can add their vaccination records to the Wallet app after installing iOS 15.1.
Note that some apps like the one used by the NHS in the UK allowed users to add their vaccination records to the Wallet app, but the new solution is a universal standard that will work for all healthcare providers/states that implement it.
MacDailyNews Take: As for requiring a COVID-19 vaccination card for entry to businesses, restaurants, venues, etcetera: If COVID-19 is so dire, why not require proof of immunity instead via antibody testing, especially since natural immunity to COVID-19 is powerful, perhaps many times more powerful than is found in those who’ve been vaccinated, even if policymakers seem afraid to admit it publicly?
Dr. Marty Makary for The Washington Post (Sept. 15, 2021):
Natural immunity to COVID is powerful. Policymakers seem afraid to say so.
It’s okay to have an incorrect scientific hypothesis. But when new data proves it wrong, you have to adapt. Unfortunately, many elected leaders and public health officials have held on far too long to the hypothesis that natural immunity offers unreliable protection against COVID-19 — a contention that is being rapidly debunked by science.
More than 15 studies have demonstrated the power of immunity acquired by previously having the virus. A 700,000-person study from Israel two weeks ago found that those who had experienced prior infections were 27 times less likely to get a second symptomatic COVID infection than those who were vaccinated. This affirmed a June Cleveland Clinic study of health-care workers (who are often exposed to the virus), in which none who had previously tested positive for the coronavirus got reinfected. The study authors concluded that “individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from covid-19 vaccination.” And in May, a Washington University study found that even a mild COVID infection resulted in long-lasting immunity…
So, the emerging science suggests that natural immunity is as good as or better than vaccine-induced immunity. That’s why it’s so frustrating that the Biden administration has repeatedly argued that immunity conferred by vaccines is preferable to immunity caused by natural infection… That rigid adherence to an outdated theory is also reflected in Biden’s recent announcement that large companies must require their employees to get vaccinated or submit to regular testing, regardless of whether they previously had the virus.
Dr. Marty Makary is chief of the Johns Hopkins Islet Transplant Center, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and editor-in-chief of Medpage Today.
Perhaps, instead of being turned away (discriminated against) for lacking a COVID-19 vaccination card, regardless of possessing what is very likely superior immunity to COVID-19, those with natural immunity can present a natural COVID-19 immunity card, so they get the very best tables in restaurants, backstage access to venues, front row seating, and more, wherever vaccines are required for entry by those who seem to lack even a cursory knowledge of history?
After all, in this latest artificial hierarchy we’re creating, logically the superior people are those with natural immunity, so they should have the ultimate access, next come those who’ve been vaccinated, these average people get to go places, but don’t get anything special, and those who are not vaccinated, even if due to surviving cancer or possessing some other underlying condition that disqualifies them from getting the vaccine and therefore their precious vaccination card, or even those who might be concerned about possible vaccine side effects, these inferior people should not be allowed to work, travel, or attend any events.
Perhaps these inferiors could be sent to camps in the name of the betterment of society? Hey, it’s an idea that’s been tried before at multiple (low) points in human history.
Yes, we’re being facetious to illustrate the point.
“Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana
Yes, COVID-19 is real. Yes, COVID-19 is a contagious disease. Yes, COVID-19 can kill, especially those with underlying conditions who should be protected as best as possible. However, the reaction to COVID-19 has clearly been blown out of all proportion and the ramifications of such overreaction will be long-lasting and difficult, if not impossible, to overcome.
Those who have lived through this period (in other words, the vast majority of people) and who are still capable of rational thought, will understand implicitly how easily fear and bad data, especially as amplified, massaged, and repeated ad nauseam via mass and social media, can be used to control even so-called “free” people who, it seems, will cede their freedoms en masse with nary a bleat. – MacDailyNews, December 28, 2020
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” – Benjamin Franklin
The real virus is the panic. #coronavirus #CoronavirusOutbreak @elonmusk
#marketcrash #marketcrash2020 https://t.co/tONjs0PgUc pic.twitter.com/42d8JCS4Js— MacDailyNews (@MacDailyNews) March 9, 2020