Coronavirus Pandemic

[Ollie the Optimist]

You’re right that we need to get back to normal as soon as possible, but I don’t think mandating vaccines is necessary to do that.
I now know quite a few people with Covid. None of them are in hospital because they’re all relatively young and healthy. Why should they be made to have a vaccine?
It’s older people who are going to be clogging up hospitals but even then you don’t need everyone in that age group to be vaccinated to take the strain off the NHS.
You don’t need mass vaccination to return to normal life.
Mandating it is crossing quite a big line.

I think you are right. Perhaps a concern would be if people dont take the vaccine, the government faces a choice of either continue lockdowns or mandatory vaccine.

Neither are appealing options that is for sure but I’m not quite sure that if the vaccines were mandated, suddenly the streets will be full of nazis like NQ suggests.

I suspect in the UK most will take the vaccine but i think some countries have real issues, particularly France with anti Vaxxers. It’ll be interesting to see how they deal with it but judging at their current rate of vaccinating only 450 people (compared to 1.3million here), they need to really convince people to get the vaccine

[I am invisible]

It seems the only way out of this is through the vaccine.

In order to return to normal life, would you support the government making this a mandatory vaccination to ensure everyone gets it?

Normally i would be against making things like that mandatory but i think in this case, as it is the only way to get back to normal, it might be a price worth paying

You can’t make it mandatory - that would set a hideous legal precedent.

What you can do is keep all current restrictions, personal protective requirements and penalties in place for everyone until such time as you are either vaccinated or the R number is smashed down to the point that the virus is basically eradicated. No need to force anyone - just let the ongoing inconvenience of life on lockdown do the work. Most hold-outs will soon crack once they see everyone else getting on with their lives and having a jolly old time.

In the meantime, I think all they really need to do is bump teachers up the priority list for the vaccine. So much hinges on schools remaining open (including critical workers being free to actually do their jobs), I just don’t understand why they’re waiting in the same line as the rest of the public?

[Letters]

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel...-b1782425.html

Any old Joe

[Letters]

I think you are right. Perhaps a concern would be if people dont take the vaccine, the government faces a choice of either continue lockdowns or mandatory vaccine.

It would become an issue if a significant percentage of the vulnerable population refuse to take the vaccine. I don’t think that’s going to happen though.

[Xhaka Can’t]

I’m going to be 30 this year!

Maybe.

[Letters]

This could be an option

https://newsthump.com/2021/01/05/gov...s-sovereignty/

"So Sovereign, They Even Turn The Passports Blue"

[Letters]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/co...their-own-luck

Interesting read.

[Ollie the Optimist]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/co...their-own-luck

Interesting read.

It is but i do disagree with it. I just dont think you can easily compare New Zealand & the UK. For starters there are more sheep then people there and also the entire population of New Zealand is less then half of London as well as being spread out over a much wider area.

New Zealand isn’t an international travel hub either. Suspect a lot the virus entered into Europe before we really knew about it because there is a lot more travel from Asia to Europe then there is to New Zealand.

I also don’t think its easy to compare Europe to Asia either in responses. The measures the Asian countries take can involve accessing your phone or bank accounts to check if you are isolating. That level of government surveillance here would not be acceptable. You only have to look at anger at the snoopers charter that the government brought in a few years ago (i forget if it was May or Cameron who brought it in). The Asian culture of wearing masks etc is also very different to ours here in the west.


That is not to say there are not lessons to be learned from New Zealand or other Asian countries but i don’t really think you can easily compare the UK & New Zealand.

It’s also very easy to attack the UK response at the moment as we are reporting 50-60k cases a day, on paper it looks very bad especially with 75k deaths. However, using that website you mentioned yesterday with the world’s Covid stats, the second wave in Europe started late October. Germany has had around 30k deaths, Italy 40k, France 30k, Spain 20k (but they are very slow at reporting), Poland 25k and the UK around 35k.

Back in April, everyone was saying that we should be like Germany and how good the German response was. We were way behind on testing etc unlike them. The opposite is now true. I think we test the most people in Europe as a % which probably explains our high case rate. The second wave has hit Europe hard but you dont get that impression in the media because they have low case rates.

[Letters]

I agree that comparisons between countries are tricky and yes population density and being an international destination are factors.
But New Zealand isn't some remote outcrop which no-one visits, I looked into this at the start of all this when someone was claiming that and millions of people visit New Zealand each year.
What we see from their PM is swift and decisive action, not the constant U-turns and slow reactions we get from Johnson.
Our deaths per million tally right now is over 1000, theirs is 5. That can't just be down to population density, they've clearly handled this situation much better than us.

[Ollie the Optimist]

I agree that comparisons between countries are tricky and yes population density and being an international destination are factors.
But New Zealand isn't some remote outcrop which no-one visits, I looked into this at the start of all this when someone was claiming that and millions of people visit New Zealand each year.
What we see from their PM is swift and decisive action, not the constant U-turns and slow reactions we get from Johnson.
Our deaths per million tally right now is over 1000, theirs is 5. That can't just be down to population density, they've clearly handled this situation much better than us.

That is a very valid point and where comparisons can be made in the style of leadership etc. Johnson has been an appalling leader but then again, that was true before Covid.

But with New Zealand, their population is around 4.8 million with around 1.6 million living in one city, Auckland. Approximately 30% in one city. On the South Island, the population is around a million.

Factors like that massively help in containment, especially if you lockdown 30% of the population in one place. Limiting the travel between islands also help. Both of those factors help but dont really play a part in the UK. This time last year, the virus would probably have been here and when you think of how many travel into london for work every day, its easy to spread.

While New Zealand is a travel destination it is not a hub. You don’t fly there to catch another flight like you do in Europe.