Ministers – not the unvaccinated – are ruining it for everybody else
There is no need to wait for the young to get vaccinated against Covid before we unlock. We can – and we must – do so now.
Cartoon by Crid.
Not even the reopening of indoor hospitality could distract the Government and – by its side as always – the media from its Covid fear campaign.
While Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng today warned against ‘stigmatising’ those who don’t take the vaccine, another minister told Politico: ‘The risk is that a small number of [unvaccinated] idiots ruin it for everyone else.’
His comment relates to the latest Covid scare story – the Indian variant. The idea – as presented by Health Secretary Matt Hancock on Sunday – is that the variant can ‘spread like wildfire’ among those who are unvaccinated. As such, if ‘enough’ people don’t take the vaccine, lockdown could be extended beyond June 21st. Indeed, the Prime Minister confirmed last Sunday that ‘nothing’ is ruled out in responding to the Indian variant.
But surely it is ministers, not the unvaccinated, who are ruining it for everybody else.
Given that more than 20 million people (including those most vulnerable to Covid) have been fully vaccinated, and 36 million have received at least one dose of a vaccine, we really should be leaving lockdowns behind us. For good. After all, the vaccine works against the Indian variant, ‘in terms’, as Oxford Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology Sunetra Gupta said last week, ‘of delivering immunity against severe disease and infection’.
Fear is being drummed up because of rising cases – but in what way, if any, does this relate to people being ill or, worse, dying? Professor Gupta says:
What we’re trying to do is prevent people from dying. Whether or not infections go up with a new variant is not relevant. It is important that people don’t die.
We have protected vulnerable people now. We have had the great good fortune to have these vaccines which protect vulnerable people. I’m sure that they will protect vulnerable people against this new variant from death. Maybe not from infection, but that’s not relevant…
Given the high costs of these mitigation strategies – the suffering among the poor and the young – I cannot understand how the balance of the debate shifts in favour of the spectre of this new variant being some monstrous thing…
Even fears about long Covid in young people are being overplayed, according to new preliminary research.
So there is no need to wait for the young – or, even, the lower-middle aged – to get vaccinated against Covid before we unlock. We can – and we must – do so now.
On a side note, I find it interesting that the main bulk of the scaremongering around the Indian variant has arisen just after plans for vaccine passports have been further scaled back (the Government is no longer planning to implement them in pubs, theatres, cinemas, and some other venues).
Indeed, this very scaling back took place following the emergence of a range of evidence that forcing people to get vaccinated wouldn't work:
One study, not yet peer reviewed, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine found that health and social care workers who feel greater pressure from their employers to receive Covid vaccination are more likely to decline it.
A US survey found that 80 per cent of those who don’t want a Covid vaccine will never change their minds.
A member of Sage said that the introduction of vaccine passports could lead to people refusing to get vaccinated against Covid.
Perhaps accepting that vaccine passports would not ‘nudge’ people (particularly young people) into taking vaccines (remember that this was the point in the first place), the Government is taking a different route of saying: ‘If you don’t get vaccinated, it will be your fault that we lockdown again and again and again.’ I’m not sure which I think is better!
