I downloaded my vaccine passport the other day.

Of course, it wasn’t called a vaccine passport. Rather, it was an “Excelsior Pass,” issued by New York State.

In addition to verifying that I have been fully vaccinated, it has a QR code that ticket-takers can scan when I want to go to Madison Square Garden to see the resurgent Knicks or Yankee Stadium to watch the faltering Yankees. It can also show the last time the holder has tested negative for COVID-19; more on that in a moment.

The Excelsior Pass, developed with IBM, is the first government-issued proof of vaccination in the U.S. But it won’t be the last: at least 17 more are in the works in the U.S. alone. Vaccine passports are the subject of controversy.

Right-wing pundits and politicians have denounced them as a threat to personal liberty, just like mask mandates. Many liberals worry that they will further exacerbate “pandemic inequality” because the vaccination rate among the poor is low. Recently, the White House declared that Americans would not be required to “obtain a single vaccination credential.”

On the other hand, the Washington Post reported in late March that the Department of Health and Human Services is “working to develop a standard way of handling credentials that would allow Americans to prove they’ve been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus as businesses try to reopen.”

At a recent White House pandemic briefing, Jeff Zients, Biden’s coronavirus coordinator, said that the administration’s goal was to “help ensure that any solution in this area should be simple, free, open source, accessible to people both digitally and on paper and designed from the start to protect people’s privacy.”

Regardless of what they are called or however strident the opposition, vaccine passports are, in fact, going to be inevitable for any return to something resembling normal interaction.

Imagine going through customs in Paris, pulling out your phone, watching the customs official scan your vaccine passport and then waving you through. It’s going to feel almost as good as getting vaccinated in the first place, and painless to boot.

Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business.