Facts. Any chance?
Lockdowns and vaccinations. What are the pro’s and con’s? Does anyone even know? Has anyone done any research? If they have, why haven’t we been told? If not, why are we being bossed around from waking till sleeping? It is the spectacular omission of cost/benefit analyses that is making the public so sceptical of every word that comes out of the mouth of a front bench minister or their advisors.
At the moment, people who have been vaccinated receive a record card, and the immunisation goes on their medical record. A “vaccine passport” could expand on this by allowing people to prove their virus status and even by allowing them to do certain things in the future: fly, attend concerts, football, etc..
Right now, however, we have Professor Van Tam telling five million people who have had the vaccine, to carry on as if they hadn’t. That’s not exactly selling the benefits, is it? Still masked, isolated, banned from seeing their families and still petrified of opening their front doors.
Where do I fit in? I’ve had what someone described, to my amusement, as the “natural vaccine”; an unpleasant stay in bed accompanied by no one bar the virus and my own sweat. I have to say, there are more pleasant bedfellows than Mr/Ms Covid!
But the relevant question is whether I am therefore safer watching my beloved Wolves than Joe Average who’s had the privilege of getting a shiny new pin stuck in his arm? In about six weeks, according to the current schedule, I’ll get an invite to come for a vaccination. How exactly does that benefit me? Can I fly first class? Get a season ticket to the Molineux?
I’ve questioned lockdowns many times before. Here I am, I’ve shielded for nigh on twelve months, avoided friends, didn’t eat out to help out, and I have still had the virus. Most likely, I caught it visiting a hospice. It does rather tend to suggest we are pretty much all going to get it, lockdowns or not.
Several countries and firms are already working on apps or digital certificates. What exactly are they going to say? This person had a vaccine to lessen the effects (maybe) of a virus he/she has already had?
The public need and deserve some straight facts. “What are the benefits of the vaccines?” would be a good start! Or even, are they all as good as each other? “Why the hell do I need one if I’ve already had it?”
Until there are good, verifiable answers to these and other questions, resentment against the government is only going to grow. Alternatively, if there aren’t such answers, people are to be assumed correct in thinking the government are guessing in the dark and why do they want to stick pins in our arms?
Martin Day – Party Secretary