How moral is it to refuse a vaccine?

Well thank goodness for that, eh? Just as we reached our darkest hour and resigned ourselves to an endless series of lockdowns and the ruination of everything we once took for granted, we heard that help might be at hand. With the announcement of a Covid vaccine, what the Prime Minister called the ‘distant bugle of the scientific cavalry’ was at last audible. Think Pheidippides staggering into Athens, or the great horn of Helm ringing out.

My instinct, and I expect yours, was to think something like: ‘Phew! It’ll take a month or two, maybe a year, but we’re in sight of things going back to normal. There is light at the end of the tunnel.’ Yet the more I have turned this over in my mind, the more I’ve found my inner gloomadon-popper (another felicitous phrase of the PM’s). It strikes me that the ferocious culture wars over lockdown and mask-wearing may be as nothing compared to those over vaccination.