Offering incentives to young people to get vaccinated is not coercion – it is good sense

Editorial: Now that there are sufficient vaccines to go round, it makes perfect sense to try to achieve herd immunity in the coming weeks

(Brian Adcock)

The younger age group have shown willingness in principle to have the Covid vaccines, according to surveys, and their sense of public duty seems admirable. They have not, on the whole, been convinced that the authorities are using magnets, the 5G network or microchips to exercise mind control during the fictional “great reset”, and they have shown discrimination in rejecting the counsel of the likes of David Icke to avoid vaccination.

However, vaccination rates for the under-30s are lower than ideal, given that the government pre-empted the completion of the vaccine programme by setting an unrealistic deadline for so-called freedom day. Hence the rush to get needles into arms.

Incentives are a sound idea. The modest vouchers and discounts offered by Deliveroo and Uber, among others, seem well-judged. They are not so generous as to provoke resentment among those already jabbed (assuming eligibility is restricted in that way) nor would they create a false incentive for any future programme for people to wait until the vouchers are offered before booking an appointment. Protection, even partial, against a potentially deadly disease should be incentive enough to book early.