We have a vaccine. In fact, we have three — and more are on the way. While we still need to scrutinise the full data from the Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca trials, the initial reports are stunning: vaccines that in some cases exceed 90 per cent effectiveness, and might be ready within weeks.
Previous surveys showed a big appetite for the vaccine, but more recent ones are concerning. According to YouGov, only 67 per cent of British people say they’d be ‘likely’ to get the Pfizer virus, with 21 per cent saying they’d be ‘fairly’ or ‘very’ unlikely to. Other polls also find that scepticism towards the vaccine is increasing.
By my amateurish, back-of-a-cigarette-packet calculations, 67 per cent is just about what we’d need for herd immunity. And that’s assuming relatively even transmission of the virus, which isn’t realistic given the clustered nature of the infections. So it would be rather helpful if we could get that 67 per cent figure quite a lot higher. How do we do it?
The first option might simply be to force people to get vaccinated. Compulsory vaccination might sound terrifyingly authoritarian, but many other democracies do it as a matter of course. In France, immunisations against measles, diphtheria, tetanus, and polio, among others, are mandatory. Since March Germany, too, has had mandatory measles vaccination — and despite the attempts of the populist Five Star Movement to abolish it, Italy’s measles vaccination law remains. Nevertheless, in the UK this doesn’t seem to be on the cards. Boris Johnson has stated that ‘there will be no compulsory vaccine’ because it’s ‘not the way we do things in this country’.
Second, there are less coercive incentives. Australia has ‘no jab, no pay’ laws, whereby parents who don’t get their kids vaccinated are no longer eligible for child and tax benefits.
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