Sajid Javid and Piers Morgan are living proof that fully vaccinated people can get Covid. Indeed, many recent Covid ‘cases’ are occurring amongst the double-jabbed. With that knowledge, the public health rationale for vaccine passports crumbles, or it should.

So I was glad to hear that Nicola Sturgeon has not, as yet, decided to introduce them, recognising that they raise “ethical and equity” considerations. But Boris Johnson persists with this illogical mission.

He intends to impose vaccine passports not only on nightclubs, but now also at football games, and in university halls of residence. One suspects that his final list is longer and more ambitious.

If he succeeds, non-vaccinated clubbers, fans, and students who could show a very recent negative test would be denied entry, while vaccinated people infected with Covid, and therefore capable of spreading it, would be waved through. This is no longer, perhaps never was, about public health, but something else entirely.

Vaccine passports, duplicitously rebranded as “freedom passes” increasingly look like an opportunistic first step in an incremental strategy to ease us into a society that resembles the Chinese government’s new “social credit” scheme. Using artificial intelligence, CCTV, the latest biometric surveillance technology, and a network of “information collectors” (better known as busybodies, snitches, or clipes) the Chinese government tracks its citizens and monitors their behaviour: what they buy, where they go, who they associate with.

They use this data to award them a social credit rating on a scale from 350-950. Think of it as a compulsory Nectar card to get you through your daily life.

High scoring individuals are rewarded with privileges, or credits, such as cheap loans, preferential travel deals, and redeemable points that can be cashed in for goods and services. People with low scores are penalised. A poor rating might mean that you lose your job, or prevent your child getting into a desirable school.

From official accounts, Chinese people welcome the scheme. Anyone with the nerve to challenge it is probably already in jail.

Fear of neo-Maoist public denunciation and shaming is understandably deeply engrained in China’s traditionally acquiescent, cowed-by-authority society. But the UK isn’t China. That scenario could never happen here, surely? Or is it already underway?

Boris Johnson just announced a new government “obesity busting app” that will monitor households’ supermarket spending.

Those who reduce their calorie intake, buy more fruit and vegetables, and increase their exercise, will accumulate extra poiants that could be exchanged for discounts, free tickets or other incentives. Our old nose-at-the-trough mates, Serco and Capita, are amongst the outsourcing companies tendering for contracts to run pilots.

Now, I don’t trust either Westminster or Holyrood to give us effective diet advice. On the contrary, government healthy eating guidelines are a major cause of the UK’s obesity problem. Nor do I trust government loyalty schemes and apps. The scope of such apps to enable data sharing between the state and private firms should worry us.

And it’s not too much of a stretch to see how a Chinese Communist Party-style digital citizen ID could be built on the back of a hybrid NHS test-and trace-and vaccine passport app.

The UK’s privacy tsar and information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham is already worried. She wants the NHS Covid app decommissioned as soon as the pandemic eases – which it is already doing – and says that vaccine passports should be time-limited.

Denham warns against “function creep” and the possibility of Whitehall evolving the app into a more permanent feature of our lives.

I never downloaded the NHS covid app. I thought it was suspect from day one. But many people did. Maybe some of them have already had enough of being tracked?

How much of the latest sharp fall in Covid ‘cases’ is attributable to people simply deleting the app?

Vigilance is definitely required on all fronts, notably when it comes to money.

Those who warned when Covid emerged that bringing in compulsory chip and pin payments was part of a plan to prepare people for a fully controlled cashless society were dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s current line is that a new central bank digital currency (CBCD), dubbed “Britcoin”, would exist “as a complement to cash and bank deposits, and not a replacement”. But you don’t need an overheated imagination to see its introduction as a precursor to edging out cash entirely.

The Bank of England is pushing ministers to make this new digital currency “programmable”, that is, it could only be spent on goods that the state or your employer deems to be necessary or sensible.

For instance, it could follow the example of the US system of paying benefits in vouchers: its goal is restricting the recipient to buying only essentials, such as food.

Sir Jon Cunliffe, a deputy governor at the bank, recently offered another example of how a digital currency might be programmed for commercial or social purposes. “You could think of ‘smart contracts’ in which the money would be programmed to be released only if something happened. You could think of giving your children pocket money, but programming the money so that it couldn’t be used for sweets.”

Smart? Scary, more like.

Yet here we are, being infantilised by our very own class of mandarins. Smiley faces and gold stars for the obedient children, sanctions for the naughty ones.

I have been lazy about surrendering my personal information, skipping over the data protection small print, and pressing "Accept” without any real clue as to what I’m permitting. But now I’m on high alert.

I’ll download no government apps, and I’ll continue to pay cash absolutely everywhere that takes it.

This will put me in the good company of all the elderly people and the Daniel Blakes whose daily lives have rapidly been made more difficult and stressful because they won’t fall in line with the relentless march of the digital revolution.

We’ll all be on the naughty step together.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald.