One in three Britons backs lockdown of unvaccinated
ONE in three people believes that those who remain unvaccinated should be forced into a lockdown until the pandemic has passed, according to a poll.
A survey by ORB found significant public support for applying harsher measures to those who have not been jabbed, in a finding one researcher suggested stemmed from the unvaccinated being wrongly “blamed and ‘othered’”.
The poll comes after Boris Johnson said it was time for a “national conversation” about “ways in which we deal with this pandemic”, adding: “I don’t think we can keep going with non-pharmaceutical interventions, I mean restrictions on people’s way of life, because a substantial proportion of the population sadly has not got vaccinated.”
While No10 insisted the Prime Minister did not favour compulsory vaccinations, his comments suggest he had entertained the idea of tougher measures for the non-vaccinated.
The ORB survey of 2,067 adults found that 35 per cent believed those who remain unvaccinated should be forced into a lockdown until the pandemic has passed, while 48 per cent disagreed. Almost one in three (32 per cent) of people disagreed that those who are unvaccinated should have the same access to hospital procedures, compared with 55 per cent who agreed.
Separately, 59 per cent said it should be compulsory for all workers to be vaccinated, as is due to be the case in New York this month. The same proportion (59 per cent) agreed that those who are refusing to take the vaccine should not be allowed into restaurants, pubs and cinemas, while more than two in three people (68 per cent) would support pub or restaurant owners who ban unvaccinated people from their venues.
Alex de Figueiredo, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: “Countries around the world have made freedom conditional on vaccination. We are now seeing countries which have vaccine passport or mandate policies unable to control rapidly rising infections.
“Instead of considering if these policies are effective, it seems many politicians and journalists are blaming and ‘othering’ the unvaccinated.”