THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR

SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times that have won him

hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything’s going to be all right read Professor Positivity. IT WAS late last year when I had a Twitter debate with Nadhim Zahawi, the vaccine minister, about passports. He even mentioned that exchange in a Westminster debate and said immediately afterwards: “We have absolutely no plans for vaccine passporting.”

We heard the same from various ministers, yet it’s clear that this system is coming and all that’s being worked out is the complexities of it.

It was all over the papers and there was a significant backlash.

How on earth would it work? We’ve just heard that vaccine supplies are going to be severely restricted for weeks to come, so it’s going to be months and months before everyone has been offered a dose and even longer for both.

There were suggestions that it would be a two-tier level of hospitality.

One for those without a passport where there would have to be social distancing – plastic screens and all the other measures – and the other would be for those with a passport, and that would be completely back to normal.

If someone had written this in a sci-fi novel a year ago it would have been laughed at for being too dystopian, but here we are.

What about those who can’t take the vaccine for medical reasons? There are so many questions which the Government has to answer.

For me personally it would make no difference, I’ve had my first dose and am scheduled to soon get my second.

But the ramifications of policies like this will be felt for years and will permanently alter our society. We need to have a long hard think about whether this is a road we want to go down, because it will be very difficult to turn back.