The difficult vaccine debate we’ve shied away from

The Prime Minister only has himself to blame for the public outcry over 70-year-olds being vaccinated when there are still many over 80-year-olds waiting even to be invited to be vaccinated. What I mean by this is that there was a perfectly good argument for vaccinating 70-to-80 year olds before the more elderly, or at the same time. But Boris Johnson eliminated all debate about that when he ordered the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to organise the vaccination programme so that deaths from or with Covid-19 should be cut as rapidly as possible.

As Professor Lim Wei Shen, chair of immunisation at the JCVI, told Jeremy Hunt’s health committee last week, it was this instruction from the PM and the health secretary that meant residents in care homes, with their carers, and those over 80 would be vaccinated before anyone else. If those priorities aren’t being met, it’s by definition a government failure.