Ethan
Money List Winner
Honestly, yes. One of the purposes of lockdown, which has kept us at home on and off for a year, has been to protect the more at risk people who have, quite rightly, been the first to get the vaccine. If the response was then 'I'm alright Jack, I had my vaccine so I am off to the Costas, thanks for protecting me now I am off to have some fun whilst you are stuck indoors' I would be seriously hacked off. In my mind, if vaccination is a requirement then nobody travels abroad on holiday until everyone has been offered the jab.
You suddenly give extra freedoms to those who lockdown was meant to protect and compliance with lockdown will end.
Just to point out what may be seen to be pedantic, but the most at risk are not necessarily the oldest. Risk is a combination of personal susceptibility and exposure. Older people have an increased susceptibility, for sure, but not necessarily the greatest exposure. A middle aged ambulance driver has lower personal susceptibility but might higher exposure. And we also know than men have a higher susepcptibility than women, approx 5 years of risk, and BAME more than white, of a similar magnitude. A proper risk-based approach would put men and BAME into one risk category higher, and male BAME two. Equally, clinically extremely vulnerable is not a homogeneous category either, with a fair range of risk across those in that category. The JCVI prioritisation was really about administrative simplicity with a veneer of risk-based.