The mood of the country is changing quickly, and the locktivists have fewer and fewer excuses to hide behind.
I'd agree with that - on finally getting out of the Cambridge/Ely area yesterday, for the first time in months, I was quite happy to see a lot of people around, mostly acting fairly normally. Cheered me up somewhat. (Unfortunately around here seems to be compliance-central most of the time).
The locktivists have had a field day these last 12 months, that is true. But just look at the reaction from both the industry & the public. There has been a resounding "No" from both. Even the BBC couldn't report on the idea without commenting on how there was a huge negative reaction. At the end of the day, this government plays the popular card, mainly because they are totally incapable of forming their own ideas. Expect in the coming weeks the government to come under more fire and these silly ideas swept under the carpet. Because if they don't, well look at Bristol. That was just the opening salvo....
I would hope so (well, not to the idea that we'll see more things like Bristol, I hope it doesn't come to that).
The problem comes once it is phrased as a choice - as it will be - between the suffocating current 'restrictions' or the 'freedom' (ha!) offered by the use of vaccine papers. Very few people seem capable of spotting these false choices and realising there are other options; certainly we've seen very little of it over the last year.
Yeah, and look at how these were upheld over time, not. Everywhere I went the rules got bent more & more as the weeks went on. The stay-at-home locktivists were probably beside themselves with excitement, but in reality rule by rule were being misshaped and eventually ignored. Don't kid yourself here, lockdown rules up and down the country are more and more being ignored, and the government know this.
I'll have to believe you on this in the case of pubs - I didn't go to any last summer/autumn (not for any particular reason, just never happened). But I agree in general that we're in a rather different state in terms of the general population than we were 12 months ago. Unfortunately in those 12 months authoritarianism has been rather normalised.
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As for social consequences of refusing treatment, I’d suggest two examples. The extreme example is that of “Typhoid Mary”, an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid who was incarcerated because she refused to stop her work as a cook, despite being linked to multiple deaths. More generally, and related to a condition of similar gravity and treatability, powers continue to exist to compel TB sufferers to take treatment and to isolate from the community. Those powers are little used and both justified and opposed for the way they focus on certain marginalised groups (particularly the homeless).
But you're talking here about people who actually have a proven disease, not healthy people. Eg. I think there is at least some argument for those with a *confirmed* Covid infection being required to self-isolate until they are better (or at the very least being heavily encouraged to), but that's not related to vaccinating the otherwise healthy.
You also elide the questions of compulsory treatment and codes quite rightly put in place after WWII with the existence of social sanction for non compliance. Without getting into the detail of the Nuremberg Code (focused on medical experimentation after the atrocious experiments on concentration camp prisoners by the Nazis), I see a fundamental difference between the choice each of us has to receive a treatment, and the reaction we may provoke in those around us by our exercise of that choice.
Perhaps (I agree that this isn't remotely approaching the atrocities of the Nazis, but I'd argue that the people who put these protocols in place understood slippery slopes too, which you stop by never getting on the slope to begin with). However this 'consequences' approach isn't the way our society has worked up to now, and we really do need to question if that is really the way we want society to work going forwards.
In my 40-odd years on this earth so far, I've lived in another country for a couple of years, and visited at least a dozen more. Neither in this country nor in any other have I ever had to show once, in all those years, that I've been vaccinated against anything.
If I were to refuse the vaccine today, I would do so in knowledge of a material possibility that in doing so I may find that some businesses won’t serve me. I retain the power of choice, but it is a consequence that I need to weigh in the balance when making that choice. I can’t say I wasn’t told.
But that's simply not acceptable. I appreciate you think that it is, but I fundamentally believe it isn't.
That is a separate question from whether the domestic vaccine passport plan is a good idea, or proportionate, or practical (I consider it none of the above).
I entirely agree. The problem is that this idea crosses two red lines - that of forcing/coercing healthy people to receive medical treatment, and that of introducing a 'papers please' society. I totally oppose both, but of course some may find one or the other unacceptable while being more neutral or even favourable to the other.
But in the hysteria about vaccines and Covid (incidentally, a hysteria that infests both “locktivists” and their more vocal opponents), I suggest that the question these are being raised for is not control of us, or to drive vaccine uptake (as various posters here make clear, it’s more likely to repel than attract), but government considering how it manages risk as a partially vaccinated society re emerges from the current measures.
But if you reject the hypothesis that this is all now about control, then why do the goalposts keep moving? The risk has already diminished - due to measures including, yes, vaccination - to levels we previously would have found entirely acceptable as part of living in a functioning society. For example, why are we now discussing vaccinating children, when they are at effectively no risk from this disease?
