LETTER OF THE WEEK

Vaccine shyness is threatening to tear my book group apart

QI am a founder member of a book group that numbered about 30 members at its peak. We have kept going through the vicissitudes of 2020, but we’ve shed some members along the way and everyone is eagerly looking forward to the day when we can finally meet face to face in our local library.

The problem we have is that our chairman has refused his Covid-19 jab on the grounds that he lives an isolated life and “doesn’t need it”. This is his choice of course. But I know there has been some discontentment about his decision among the other members, most of whom have been vaccinated at least once, with splinter groups forming on WhatsApp and so forth.

I am concerned his continued attendance may lead to a boycott, and we won’t be able to rebuild the group to its former strength. Should we ask him to reconsider, mount a coup or just invite him to sit by the window and keep our distance?

– Dorothy, Leics

Dear Dorothy

AOK. Let’s just do a slight reality shift here. Imagine we’re talking not about Covid but, say, chickenpox. Everyone in your book group has either had it or been vaccinated against it: everyone, that is, except the chairman, who swerved the illness as a child and now refuses to be immunised, for whatever reason.

Who cares? The rest of you have immunity. You probably can’t catch it from him if he comes to a meeting having been (whether knowingly or unknowingly) infected. In fact, he’s the only person in the room at any seriously quantifiable risk from chickenpox. If he picks it up elsewhere, he won’t be able to pass it on to you; and he’s unlikely to pick it up elsewhere because it’ll be the same story out in the wider world as in your club – widespread immunity.

Now let’s come back to the case at hand. Covid vaccines have performed brilliantly at preventing illness in laboratory tests and realworld surveys. Death rates and hospitalisations are plummeting in the UK.

OK, there are unanswered questions about transmission: there seems to be a possibility that people who’ve had Covid, or been vaccinated against it, or both, can pass it on. The new variants are worrying – we’re not out of the woods yet. But the signs are good: a recent report by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control claims the likelihood of Covid transmission in a household is reduced by at least 30 per cent when one person has been vaccinated.

Others may argue differently, but you asked me for my opinion, Dorothy, so I’ve

So yes, I’d mount a coup, as you put it, in the form of an election under your club’s rules

given it. Personally, I don’t think your chairman will pose much of a risk of illness to anyone – especially if his life is really as “isolated” as you say – assuming, of course, that everyone in the group and at the library have been vaccinated and the virus is still in retreat by the time you’re able to meet as a group again.

I can’t see that he will be at much risk, either, if there are good protocols in place (and, of course, the risk he runs by refusing a vaccine is his choice too).

But I do think he’s acting somewhat self-indulgently, even selfishly, considering his position at the club and the general discombobulation his stubborn refusal to be vaccinated is causing, of which I assume he is aware.

So, yes, I’d mount a coup, as you put it, in the form of an election under your club’s rules. If he’s causing a crisis of confidence just when you’re hoping to rebuild your club, he should consider his position – or have it considered for him.

Actions – or non-actions – have consequences, and this man may have just written himself out of the story.