8 ms·

Fake vaccine cards are everywhere. It’s a public health nightmare

• benpiper 5y ago
  A better headline: "Fake vaccines are everywhere"
• kuba-orlik 5y ago
  Aren't the cards cryptographically signed as the EU ones?
• hammock 5y ago
  Is it really a public health nightmare? What data is there to show that vaccine passports are effective at reducing spread or hospitalizations?
  • listless 5y ago
    What data is there to show that vaccines reduce the spread? Hospitalization, yes. Spread? Not anymore!
    • errcorrectcode 5y ago
      Unpopular observation: if an ebola-deadly, vaccine-effective variant comes along, it would hopefully wipe out enough of those who are too dumb to take care of themselves or impetuously refuse vaccines. Modern life and medicine is too safe to select for common sense or intelligence.
      • keneda7 5y ago
        Have you even considered that this is what many people who have not taken the vaccine are waiting for? They are going to go get the vaccine when this deadly strains comes out. It is no secret MRNA vaccines do not last. It was known before COVID and no miraculous break through occurred that fixed this this issue they have. Previous MRNA vaccines applicants also showed you cannot just keep reinjecting yourself every x months. It causes a whole host of problem including weakening your immune system (EU recently rewarned about this for the Covid one). So its seems the people not vaccinated will have an option to actually get protected, not so much for those that have taken it already though.
        • errcorrectcode 5y ago
          > Previous MRNA [sic] vaccines applicants also showed you cannot just keep reinjecting yourself every x months. > So its seems the people not vaccinated will have an option to actually get protected, not so much for those that have taken it already though. This is utter hogwash horseshit. Let me guess. You watch InfoWars, OAN, and Fox News. You need some better "alternative facts" that include how long vaccines take to generate neutralizing antibodies and how long they last. * Instead, countries should leave more time between booster programs and tie them to the onset of the cold season in each hemisphere, following the blueprint set out by influenza vaccination strategies, the agency said.* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-11/repeat-booster-shots-risk-overloading-immune-system-ema-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-11/repeat-bo... Maybe when you learn to read and quote things fairly, you won't look like such a dummy.
          • keneda7 5y ago
            Glad you have to resort to person attacks and then quote an article backing up my point you can't constantly be giving boosters out. I never said there wasn't a good strategy but rather than doing it x month was bad which in fact it is. You however had to make something up so you can launch your personal attack. Please review the guidelines and rules before you type more utter hogwash horseshit https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
            • errcorrectcode 5y ago
              Contribute value or leave. Have a nice day.
  • cute_boi 5y ago
    Isn't that a common knowledge, assuming vaccination means less hospitalization. So, why do we even need data in such case? Vaccine passports somehow forces or incentivizes people to vaccinate more?
    • torstenvl 5y ago
      No. Requiring vaccine passports or vaccine cards incentivizes people to get vaccine passports and/or vaccine cards, which is exactly what we're seeing. This is like counting lines of code or repo commits to see how productive a SWE is. If you want to incentivize X, you have to be very careful not to instead incentivize an imperfect proxy for X.
      • mathwords 5y ago
        Same with the tests. All it says is that the test said positive or negative. It in no way tells you anything about how bad your Covid is, how far along it is, and if you can spread it to others. The tests are a last minute cash grab. Stop getting tested and this thing ends. (However I know a bunch of folks who have to be tested anyway because they didn’t want to be boosted, despite getting the initial vax)
        • epakai 5y ago
          Absurd. "Stop going to the hospital and this thing ends" is on the same level. Cash flow has nothing to do with virus spread. It's interesting to consider misaligned incentives but you are alleging something much more serious without giving any credence to the actual purpose of testing.
          • hammock 5y ago
            >Cash flow has nothing to do with virus spread. Not wrong, however cash flow does have something to do with hospitalizations and covid death counts. Hospitals get subsidized for admitted covid patients and for covid deaths.
      • 5y ago
  • armagon 5y ago
    Not just numbers, but numbers we can trust. I've been really impressed with how much data my province (Alberta) has made available, but now, I'm wondering. They recently had "technical difficulties", and the numbers changed from showing that double-vaxxed people were the most at-risk for omicron, to showing that unvaxxed people are. https://twitter.com/AB_CovidFacts/status/1486112498977685506 https://twitter.com/AB_CovidFacts/status/1486112498977685506 Also disturbing is that, if you get vaccinated and have issues within the first 14 days, they count you as being unvaccinated in all the reports: https://metatron.substack.com/p/alberta-just-inadvertently-confessed https://metatron.substack.com/p/alberta-just-inadvertently-c...
    • mathwords 5y ago
      • dang 5y ago
        Could you please not create accounts to break HN's rules with? We ban those (I've banned this one), and it's not in your interests to do so. The only reason why HN is worth anything in the first place—and it must be worth something, or you wouldn't be here—is if it's interesting, and flamewar destroys interestingness.
    • knownjorbist 5y ago
      Is there a reasonable explanation for the revised numbers without delving into conspiracies?
      • nonethewiser 5y ago
        >Is there a reasonable explanation for the revised numbers without delving into conspiracies? Why are you assuming these are mutually exclusive? Governments are famous for nothing if not conspiring.
  • codyb 5y ago
    I for one really enjoy the vaccine mandate in NYC. I feel much more comfortable knowing that if I catch it going out (seems likely), I'll be unlikely to spread it to anyone unvaccinated causing serious disease. Of course I'm also boosted and got my flu shot (and do it every year), so I'm probably already more conscientious living in NYC than many. If someone uses a fake to get in... well... there's only so much I can do, but I discourage it for their own health and for the health of others around them. I flat out told my friend who did the same as such. I'm sure he'd get through it, but why get mega sick instead of getting the vaccine at this point?
    • Ekaros 5y ago
      You should not really care about people who aren't vaccinated by choice. They have made their own decision and are ready to take the risk. And I'm all for giving them the opportunity.
    • jrs235 5y ago
      >If someone uses a fake to get in... well... there's only so much I can do, but I discourage it for their own health and for the health of others around them. I think you're conflating getting a vaccine card with getting the vaccine.
    • Axien 5y ago
      So someone else’s freedoms should be limited so you can feel “comfortable”?
      • codyb 5y ago
        Lol, yes. If people want to eat at restaurants unvaccinated in NYC they have a variety of options. They can eat outside in the stalls which often have heat and shields against the wind. They can order at home and eat with their friends who want to take that risk. Going to a concert so you can more likely catch and spread a highly infectious virus and become more sick and hospitalized isn't some constitutional right. And the value of not having people who'll willingly "limit someone else's freedoms" by spreading a virus they could be vaccinated against, well, at the end of the day, I'd rather "limit their freedoms" to use your term, then the person who didn't need to catch it anyways and is now sick or hospitalized. That sounds a lot more like "limited freedoms" than "Oh no, I can't see a play".
• ukie 5y ago
  Good. People have a right to be free.
  • cute_boi 5y ago
    Well depends what you call free. If we can end pandemic, we don't have to wear masks, no more boosters. That would be ideal freedom right? But not vaccinating, thinking one can outsmart public health officials, being intolerant is apparently not a freedom to me.
    • mathwords 5y ago
      • exogeny 5y ago
        This is a disgusting, ridiculous comparison.
    • awd 5y ago
      And, after some countries are now on their 4th boosters (Edit: shot, not booster), and my country being about halfway done with their third round, are we slowly stamping out the virus? Personally I feel lied to and misled, the messaging from the government where I am from was far from what one would call nuanced and informed. The short story is that they promised: "If you take your shots, then we'll get out of this mess". Even now, a propaganda ad that states: "We don't want you to take a booster to make things impossible, we want you to take your booster to make things possible again". Even though it's abundantly clear that people are getting reinfected and spreading Omicron, booster or no booster. From my perspective we're kidding ourselves that we can get a handle on this disease without permanently going in and out of lockdowns. In my county we stamped out the virus at least twice before (stamped out going to < 20 cases per day, some cities without for months). And then it comes back. Well I'm done locking down, and I think this is a consistent, fair standpoint to take. I don't want to have to identify myself and my status to enter the store or public life. People get sick, people die, everyone will get omicron, or something similar, eventually.
• technothrasher 5y ago
  Validating seems to be so lackluster that I'm not sure fake card producers are even an issue currently. Any time I've had to validate my vax status in order to get into some establishment, either a crappy photocopy or a digital photo of the card on my phone has been accepted without even blinking. Typically they don't even look at the info, they just see you wave something that looks vaguely right at them and they're satisfied.
  • ryandrake 5y ago
    Yea, this is a problem, too. Know why liquor stores [generally] scrutinize IDs carefully when someone who looks young tries to buy alcohol? Because there are actually legal consequences to them for getting it wrong that governments love to enforce.
    • technothrasher 5y ago
      Yep, you are right. I actually used to own a liquor store. Shutting you down for a day or more while you pay for your employees to go to mandatory retraining hits the pocket book pretty hard. Of course you could (well, had to, really) also just pay into the local police 'benevolent society'. It was cheaper and kept you out of most trouble.
  • 015a 5y ago
    Somehow, inexplicably, some of our governments believed it a good idea to delegate underpaid, overworked individuals at private companies to the role of vaccine police. At best, its virtue signal posturing; ineffectual. The far scarier take: a power like this should principally and traditionally lie with the police, but legislating it so would have the optics of being authoritarian, thus our governments delegate the power to private corporations, further entrenching the cyberpunk corpocapitalistic power dynamic of the real governance of the United States. Such a move (nearly) flies by, even lauded by some, because the population at large still doesn't recognize or respect how much fucking power corporations have in this country.
• mmacvicarprett 5y ago
  What is preventing the US from putting a QR in those cards as many other countries?
  • jaywalk 5y ago
    The cards were never meant to act as authentication. They're literally just for the patient's personal use.
  • Dma54rhs 5y ago
    The qr code idea in Europe works together with your id. Americans don't want to use ID even for voting, hard to expect to have working vaccination card program. Hence they're left with random papers and the problem on hand.
    • nonethewiser 5y ago
      > Americans don't want to use ID even for voting *many liberal Americans
      • knownjorbist 5y ago
        That's funny, considering the concept of a national ID has been soundly rejected by republicans for decades. Instead we shoehorned SSN's into that position.
        • nonethewiser 5y ago
          He said: > Americans don't want to use ID even for voting You said: > a national ID Most Republicans do not favor national ID's and do favor checking ID's to vote. The idea behind voter ID is using the same state ID you use to buy liquor, etc.
      • pndy 5y ago
        Pretty sure the US doesn't have an official federal-issued ID, and most of the time driving license works as such. And it seems this applies to the majority of Anglosphere countries. Here in Poland we have a compulsory IDs, which for over 20 years now are plastic. Recently RFID tags and finger prints were added; there's also a standard biometric photo of face. All of this comes also with electronic and qualified electronic signature which can be used to verify our identity in government services or to sign the digital documents. And yes, we need to have it or the slowly accepted digital version when we want to vote in any elections.
• riskable 5y ago
  As long as there's some mechanism to identify the fraudulent cards people can be held accountable for trying to pass off a fake as the real thing. Making, selling, or using a fake vaccination card is a felony. Can just anybody call up say, Walmart and verify if a vaccination card supposedly filled out by them is authentic? If not then that's the issue. Not the fact that fakes exist.
  • jaywalk 5y ago
    Yes, let's just make everyone's private medical info even less private! That's the ticket!
    • soco 5y ago
      I don't understand why the US must invent new solutions, when there are already working solutions in other countries of the world. Yes, with a digitally signed QR code and an ID, where the controller checks the signature and the ID and that's it, no medical info goes anywhere. Even the US has ID checks when buying alcohol, why it's so difficult to use for covid? And yeah some people show fake IDs too, but how many are those. And yeah some people will show with "lying" QRs but only the health authorities can issue those so you know already where you must look for the forgers.
      • jaywalk 5y ago
        What "new solutions" has the US invented? The cards were never meant to serve as proof of vaccination. That's the bottom line.
• xboxnolifes 5y ago
  It's not even the vaccine part of a vaccine card that bothers me the most. I just don't want to expand the "papers, please" part of living in a society. Every little thing shouldn't need verification.
• crumbits 5y ago
  This article presents largely circumstantial evidence. But it’s true, many people will get fake vaccine cards because they believe in bodily autonomy.
• mathwords 5y ago
• cute_boi 5y ago
  Philosophical & Cynical View: What I have learned in this world is if you have enough money you can fake 99% thing. The only problem is faking efficiently.
• pyronik19 5y ago
  Best form of civil disobedience for these authoritarian and I would argue unlawful government mandates.
  • rrix2 5y ago
    • jaywalk 5y ago
      Maybe if you're immuno-compromised, you should take more precautions. Especially since the vaccines do not prevent spread. "But they reduce the chance of spread!" the first reply will say. Great! Tell that to your immuno-compromised friends, neighbors and family that you killed because you were "less likely" to spread Covid, but did so anyway.
    • chroem- 5y ago
      I'm immunocompromised because of some medication I take, but I don't agree with the idea of the government forcing people to undergo a medical procedure. I'm fully vaccinated and I hope that others get vaccinated too, but mandates under threat of consequences are a clear violation of medical ethics. (and yes, it is a medical procedure with demonstrable risks)
    • kcplate 5y ago
      No, I don’t buy this “pull the heartstrings to protect grandma” fallacy. For it to be true, the vaccines would have to be highly effective at preventing infection and these vaccines are not highly effective at preventing infections. The Covid vaccine protections stop at the vaccinated individual, with perhaps a side benefit of easing some healthcare system stress due to severe disease prevention. Also, plenty of studies are out that now that show that the infected, whether vaccinated or not have statistically equivalent viral shedding. You are equally contagious whether vaccinated or not. If you are that immuno-compromised, you need to take whatever precautions you need to do to protect yourself and not place that responsibility on anyone else.
• freddealmeida 5y ago
  I highly disagree with this. In fact, I think the best thing for the world is more fake ids. So we can search for true vectors of disease, such as MRNA gene therapies that are not fully tested. Passports are just a means to move to a social credit score. Which is horrifying in its implications.
  • happytoexplain 5y ago
    Can't we both research vectors and have vaccine cards? And surely you're exaggerating by the use of the word "just". Maybe there is some circle I have not interacted with where a vaccine card is a weird social status thing, but they are also literally vaccine cards. Medical records conveying actionable information, in addition to whatever else, however inherently imperfect at that job.
    • all2 5y ago
      You misinterpret "social credit score". GP means a Chinese-esque implementation of government tracking that shows whether you are a "quality citizen" or not.
• spcebar 5y ago
  Who could have guessed a piece of cardstock would be a poor means of verification. No one seems to have thought these through and few seem to be taking it seriously.
• kube-system 5y ago
  I am amazed that anyone would spend hundreds of dollars to get replica of a handwritten paper card with zero security features of which there are millions of originals floating around. I guess the people who don't really understand how vaccines work also overlap with with people who don't understand how paper cards with no security features work.
  • tyingq 5y ago
    Some people perhaps don't have the skills to replicate the different handwriting, stamps, reasonable dates/locations, etc, that would be needed to make them plausible for a specific area. Even if they aren't technically security features, they sort of are.
• nvelty 5y ago
  This is a direct result of the (intentionally) punitive nature of vaccine mandates. Broad, heavy-handed actions by the government are the classic spark for societal backlash. A softer approach that focused on positive benefits for having a vax pass versus punishing unvaxxed would probably had better results. Instead, we've pushed (presumably) otherwise law-abiding citizens into using forged documents. This directly undermines the legitimacy of the government - people lose respect for an authority that cannnot enforce its own orders, and these people will be more likely to carry out similar acts of defiance in the future. Considering the political polarization in America, this is not a recipe for success.
  • daenz 5y ago
    People Don't realize that Quebec is banning unvaccinated people from many stores including big box stores (Walmart etc) [0]. The punitive nature is a side effect of creating this new authoritarianism. If you could have new authoritarianism more effectively without punitive measures, I'm sure that's what we would see. 0. https://youtu.be/PtTqEV5aWWY https://youtu.be/PtTqEV5aWWY
  • kube-system 5y ago
    Some states tried using positive feedback in the form of lotteries, prizes, or even just paying people to get the vaccine. I don't think those measures were very successful.
    • akvadrako 5y ago
      I haven't heard of paying people to get vaccinated so I search for it and one of it worked a little bit even when it was a measly $24, which doesn't it really cover the time it takes. https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/does-paying-people-get-vaccinated-work https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/does-paying-people-get-v... Where did they do it that it failed?
      • kube-system 5y ago
        Several US states struggling with vaccination rates paid people $100 to get vaccinated, for example: Louisiana and West Virginia https://ldh.la.gov/news/SF100-Extended https://ldh.la.gov/news/SF100-Extended https://www.wboy.com/news/health/coronavirus/watch-live-wv-gov-justice-schedules-thursday-covid-19-briefing-for-1-p-m/ https://www.wboy.com/news/health/coronavirus/watch-live-wv-g... Yet, their vaccination rates still largely follow their political predispositions. I initially thought these plans were a great idea, but I'm not sure that they've been as effective as I hoped.
• ryandrake 5y ago
  This will obviously happen when there is no enforcement against it. If the last two years showed us anything it’s that the federal and state governments are all talk when it comes to COVID and can’t be bothered to enforce any of their so-called mandates. You know what would help fight these forgeries? Visible consequences for producing and possessing them.
  • jaywalk 5y ago
    How would you propose we start doing that?
    • ryandrake 5y ago
      Well we kind of can’t, now, since the design of the existing ones are so easily faked. If we could do them over again: 1. Go back in time and use one or more anti-forgery features of drivers licenses to at least make them hard to forge 2. Hold retailers accountable who fail to check or accept a forgery (like we do for liquor stores checking ID) 3. Consequences for possession of forged documents 4. Find and go after producers of them. This can’t be hard—the police could probably find quite a few just with a web search.
• ghshephard 5y ago
  Does it feel like it was pretty deliberate that these vaccine cards were designed in such a way as to be relatively easy to fake - or at the very lease, not designed to be hard to copy. I'm always impressed when I go to Mexico about the quality of the immigration card with the embossed/hologram like headers, that you get. If vaccine cards had looked like that it would have reduced counterfeits significantly. I'm 100% in on vaccine mandates, and mask mandates, and (hyper-local) lockdowns when appropriate - but I'm also really glad the United States didn't go all big brother on Government Tracking/Documentation on this stuff.
  • jaywalk 5y ago
    They weren't designed to be an authentication measure in the first place any more than the little reminder card your doctor's office gives you when you schedule your next appointment.
• mikestew 5y ago
  The "public health nightmare" is that such a thing is so easily faked, on top of the fact that no one looks anyway. Has anyone ever seen a QR code being scanned? No? Just wave a screenshot of your friend's digital vaccination record? Yeah, that works. Why even bother with fake cardboard representations? Post that screenshot (with the QR code replaced by a rickroll URL) to your Telegram channel, sorted. But just now with the pearl-clutching? Because when they handed me my card almost a year ago, I almost didn't hang on to it because my first thought was, "well, no one is going to accept that as proof of vaccination. I could have photocopied it for all anyone knows." Turns out...
  • soco 5y ago
    In Switzerland and Italy I've had mine scanned pretty much everywhere I went. So I wouldn't generalize.
    • mikestew 5y ago
      US-centric POV because US-centric article, from the sub-headline: "Thousands of fake vaccine card vendors threaten to gut the effectiveness of U.S. vaccine mandates"
  • alamortsubite 5y ago
    > Has anyone ever seen a QR code being scanned? No? Just wave a screenshot of your friend's digital vaccination record? Yeah, that works. Sometimes. In my experience, it's just as likely your photo ID will be scrutinized and compared with the QR code. Which in your scenario does not work. The problem is there are rarely repercussions for the individual that presents the bogus documentation, or the entity that accepts them.
• windows2020 5y ago
  The worst part of this is that if you end up with a fake card, you're clearly against the idea of it, but not enough to take a stand against it.
• MrBeef 5y ago
• MrBeef 5y ago
• nonethewiser 5y ago
  The US government's inability to deploy effective mobile validation apps like China is a feature, not a bug. A "legit" handwritten card signed by someone at Walgreens is inherently untrustworthy.
  • kube-system 5y ago
    Legit cards are not "signed" by anyone. They're simply vaccination records for the patient. The patient derives their trust in the card from the fact that they were present at their own vaccination.
    • nonethewiser 5y ago
      >They're simply vaccination records for the patient. Yes, exactly. And "signed" was not the best term. "Filled out" would be better.
• Axien 5y ago
  That’s because the vaccine cards were never designed to authenticate vaccine status. It was literally an appointment reminder mechanism. In fact, a PDF of the blank card was available from the CDC website.
• keyme 5y ago
  Good. No one verifies this crap anyway. Even in Israel where it's a digitally signed government issued token, nobody has actually ever verified it (that I've seen). Only at the airport, maybe.
• monkmartinez 5y ago
  I can tell you as a first responder, it doesn't matter. The "vaccine" is a damn joke. I am F**ing exhausted this morning, and I don't care anymore. We are being run in the ground across the country with people quitting left and right. Fake vaccine cards are the least of our worries. You heard it here first. The emergency medical system is in deep trouble for way too many reasons to enumerate here. Anecdote time; I responded to the same 200 person retirement home 3 times last night (Thus the "grumpy" tude). "Mask up" signs everywhere, every employee wearing a mask properly, NO visitors for the past month, etc. AND the place is at least 80% infected with Covid. Every resident is "fully vaccinate with boosters"! The eldery that live there are pissed, we are pissed and the staff is running on fumes. They were told they were getting a vaccine... their definition of vaccine doesn't include still getting the disease, but just a little less sever (which, incidentally has NOT been the case for a lot of them). That doesn't make sense to them or me if I am being honest. They are sick, some of them really sick. There isn't much we can do except to give them options... stay home and fight the fever/sickness yourself or go to ER and wait for hours (depending on severity of symptoms). We are waiting for transports to the ER for an hour or more as the wall time at ER's explodes due to staffing shortages across the board. I don't see a difference between what I saw in April, May and June of 2020 and now, with respect to Covid... with the exception of less people willing to work at ER's and EMS. Call numbers are UP massively as everyone thinks covid is going to kill them instantly. Its like people forgot how to take care of a common cold as was the case when Covid hit initially. Treat the fever, drink fluids the second you start feeling bad... don't wait until you have a 104 temp to start taking care of yourself. I am so jaded with how bad people are at doing ANYTHING for themselves. I often wonder how people have made it to the age of 60, 75, 80 with the kinds of lifestyles I see out there. SO MANY OBESE PEOPLE. SO MANY. You wonder why you are sick? really?
  • errcorrectcode 5y ago
    Police around the US are in a similar boat with low morale and resignations. This is how civilization could end: abuse and neglect of essential services, people divided and acting like idiot children, ignoring self-preservation, ready to fight each other over rumors and conspiracy theories, and corrupt and under-communicative political system and leadership. That's problems of communication (Vaccines: You can get pretty sick but you won't die.) and abusing EMS (fear of being sued hypochondria and not triaging calls enough), not the vaccine. The vaxx card should've contained anti-forging properties like holograms or security threads, and been maintained electronically at issuance with a QR code for verification purposes. The card itself shouldn't be proof.
• nonethewiser 5y ago
  Why did this drop of the front page? I'm not familiar with how the HN algorithm works. I would guess some combination of recency and activity.
• disambiguation 5y ago
  If one of the goals of the vaccine passport is to partition the vaccinated from the unvaccinated (i.e i don't want to put my patrons at risk by allowing someone sick to enter my shop) then I suspect fraud is at the bottom of a long list of other more important issues that undermine said goal. In order for vaccine passports to be effective, they need to be full-scale, uniform, and zero-tolerance. For ex. Australia does this high effect. But in the U.S. every state, business, and household has a different set of rules and they've been making it up as they go. This has resulted in numerous non-fraud scenarios where the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups mingle, and supposedly exchange the virus. Ex. Grocery stores, schools, holiday dinners and parties Our approach has been so federated that I can't imagine any meaningful improvements can be attributed to the passports. Inversely I can't imagine any real negative effects can be attributed to fraud.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• aakresearch 5y ago
  My nana lived a long and good life. When I was a little boy, I discovered that she's actually one year older than her official documents suggest. She revealed that it was not done by a mistake or a typo, but by a deliberate action. The story was that in the early 1940s the village she was living in was under German occupation and young people were being conscripted into "labor camps" and transferred to Reich mainland. So her family pulled all the strings, bribed all right people to make a "correction" to the documents in a way indistinguishable from original record. The war was over in a few years, but nobody bothered to "fix" the fake record. By the way, German administration at the time wanted to be seen as "liberators from communist oppression". The conscription was promoted as highly noble thing, beneficial for the "New Order". Those joining "labor camps" were celebrated. There were bounties set for dobbing in partisans ("bandits"). Although collaborators were many, nonetheless many others, lacking the necessary connections to obtain fake ausweiss, chose to fight the "liberators" with all the rage they could muster. Many paid the ultimate price. If my grandma's document forgery was revealed, the whole family would be in line for execution. By no means it was an "easier" option than conscription, but certainly "easier" than fully joining "people's avengers". I believe when the matter is perceived as life-and-death, the lack of "easier" option to take out a fake document may very well push some people into full-blood fight. You don't need many of them before society falls into a bloody war. So, the prevalence of fake vaccine certificates may be not a problem, but a blessing in disguise. If one is willing to consider a possible alternative.