The problem is, as we have seen with numerous comments on here, is that the government's messaging on all of this has been appalling from the word go. I think we can all agree on that. Remember Blow Jo's opening..."just wash your hands"....bollox. They need to be honest with people. The facts are...
1. Having the vaccine will NOT stop you getting Covid or not stop you spreading it. It is a form of flu and behaves in a similar way. Studies out of the US on the effectiveness of the flu vaccine over the years suggest efficacy ranging from as low as 10% in some years to as high as 60% in others [
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine]. That's why elderly people and vulnerable people still unfortunately die of flu every winter, even when they have had the flu jab. The reason is that the flu virus constantly mutates to survive which is why they have to keep tweaking the vaccine to combat it.
2. If you disbelieve what I'm saying on point 1, why should you believe that any healthy person under 50 should have the vaccine, because surely the vulnerable will now be safe because they have had the vaccine?
3. The real reason for lockdown I believe is that the NHS is running dangerously low on staff as a result of a number of factors. This is why all other operations in most areas of the country are postponed and the waiting lists are growing exponentially. If we had capacity to deal with Covid then we wouldn't be locked down. We don't lockdown for the flu every year even though thousands of vulnerable people die from it. Remember Hancock promised us 50K new nurses. I wonder how that's going
. If we get the capacity in place by next winter and hammer home the message that if you have symptoms to stay at home then it becomes far more manageable. If you don't feel great but have to go out say to shop, wear a mask like they do in Asia to contain the spread and respect/protect others.
4. Forcing people to have a vaccine or having vaccine passport discrimination is certainly not the answer unless we have given up completely on human rights and the lunatics are in charge of the asylum. Hmmm, may be I've shot myself in the foot on this one
5. If you think the government has done a good job, think again. The UK is amongst the top 3 worst in the world in terms of official Covid deaths adjusted for population size. For example, the UK has had 120K Covid deaths vs less than 70K in Germany. And remember the German population is 16 million bigger than the UKs and it hasn't had the advantage of being an island. New Zealand has had just 26 deaths and Japan just 7, 200! The government's response has been a catalogue of failure from start to finish.
6. We have learn't to live with the flu and we will learn to live with Covid. Investment in NHS capacity, education on personal hygene and social behaviour/responsibility is the way out of this....