PASSPORTS DO MATTER, BUT JAB MATTERS MORE
VACCINATION passports are nowhere as important as actual vaccinations, but we may be in danger of over-emphasising the usefulness of the former by deciding on the extension of their use into 2022. A passport doesn’t protect anyone. Somebody who can prove they are vaccinated to gain entry to a venue is still a potential carrier of the Covid virus and can still pass it on. Importantly, the chance of passing on the virus is lower than of an unvaccinated person doing so. However, it doesn’t look good that many pubs and restaurants have been lax in the performance of their mandated duties to check certificates.
This matters because the most important use for a vaccine passport may be as an incentive to those who would otherwise remain unvaccinated. If those people feel they can’t get access to things they want to do because they don’t have a passport, they may be persuaded then to take the vaccine.
Maybe not being able to get into pubs and restaurants in the pre-Christmas period will persuade the estimated 300,000 unvaccinated, but it’s unlikely to motivate more than a handful.
Other ways will have to be found to persuade the unvaccinated (and the 70,000 with just one shot) to overcome their reluctance to join the 92% who have been fully jabbed.
As I know from messages to my radio show, there are people who now claim the vaccine is useless because they’ve heard of vaccinated people who have been hospitalised with Covid – and of people who have died.
But qualified medics, such as Professor Liam Fanning at UCC, have explained that the vaccine was never meant to be a magic potion that made people immune from Covid-19. What it is meant to do is lessen the effects of being ill.
From personal experience, I’m confident that being fully vaxxed made my September Covid illness shorter and less uncomfortable than it would have been otherwise.
It is notable how, for example, the circumstances of the death of former US secretary of state Colin Powell were so seriously misrepresented by many in America. His health was seriously compromised by cancers that destroyed his immune system. To suggest the vaccine failed him was a cynical act by antivaxxers, aided by cynical media.
Our Government must speed up the rollout of booster shots to the vulnerable, as well as the over-60s. It needs to do so to reduce the strain on the hospitals – and to keep as many people as possible safe from a horrible disease.