We should all donate towards our vaccines

I WONDER how long we are prepared to let the Government pay for all our vaccinations? These jabs are everybody’s life-savers, and they remove a sinister cloud which hangs over all our lives. Who does not feel so much more contented with life when the jab is given to us? It is no less than a free, scientific miracle.

Professor Whitty has said that this is “everybody’s problem”, and so it is.

Let all vaccine recipients contribute where we can to the huge cost of it all. If luck is on our side, we could raise a huge amount of money.

I believe we can rely on the great generosity of the people, many of whom have saved so much money during the lockdown. The great Sir Tom has shown up the generosity of everyone who gave so willingly to his cause. As I write, we are approaching 17 million vaccinations, so if every one of those gave just £1 – a bit more than a first-class stamp – that would yield £17 million “just like that”, as the late Tommy Cooper would have said. Better still, to give even a tiny percentage of one’s income and assets at the time the jab is given to us might well pay for the cost of the vaccination programme.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution since 1824 has been supported entirely by voluntary contributions. Their mission is “saving lives at sea”. What about “saving lives on land”? I know of no charity with that mission, so this could be it, for that is what vaccines do, perhaps for us all, in time. This is “everybody’s lifeboat”!

So, let us help out voluntarily with this massive financial burden on our Government. After all, how much are our lives worth? And what about crowdfunding? If this is not crowdfunding, what is?

Matt Hancock recently said, on February 8, that vaccines are “free for now” – a hint of what may be on the way. It would be nice to preempt that, with a surge of personal voluntary giving. The NHS was never designed to cope with such a frightening pandemic as this one.

John Hornby Southwick , Wiltshire