Andy Abrahams, leader of the Labour Group in Mansfield, could not believe the challenge coming from Mansfield’s MP, Ben Bradley, around the government’s plans for vaccine passports.  “His irresponsible advice will lead to many unnecessary deaths…. Even Boris has learnt from his previous mistakes.”

“It defies logic, and not only shows a total disrespect for our brilliant scientists and health advisers, but more importantly to all our NHS staff and workers in social care who are exhausted, both mentally and physically from the continuous trauma of dealing with seriously ill patients, most who are in hospital because they are unvaccinated!”

“You just have to look at the comparative data and what happened last Christmas to realise that taking preventative action now will result in less lives lost and businesses recovering faster.  In December 2020 there were 15,000 infections,  then due to the Delta variant, which was three times more infectious, we had in January 2021 exponential growth to 60,000 infections, which led to the tripling of the number of deaths from 400 to 1200 each day.”

Today we have nearly 60.000 new infections but only 120 deaths, so you don’t have to be a member of MENSA to deduce the reason for this is getting vaccinated.  The Omicron variant can be up to four times more infectious than the Delta variant, and therefore why would we not be advising as many people to get vaccinated as soon as possible to prevent a tsunami of hospitalisations in the New Year.

The 40% of the 18 to 34 age group that have not been vaccinated will also be the group who will be out in the pubs, nightclubs and celebrating Christmas by mixing socially.  So any right minded person would be advising them to get vaccinated to prevent them being super spreaders.

I am not picking on these young people, but the responsible advice would be to encourage them to get vaccinated and not stir up resistance to the advice by inferring it as undemocratic.  Introducing Covid passports would still give these young people freedom of choice, but at least the ones that decide to stay unvaccinated will not be able to access events that could lead them to infecting the others.  The sensible course of action would be to get vaccinated to protect themselves and their loved ones.  Public figures should think twice before dishing out irresponsible advice that could cost lives.