If you refuse the vaccine, then the people who got the vaccine lose their immunity.
Masks are like that, too.
It’s settled science and makes total sense.
The Queen has made a historic intervention in the coronavirus vaccination drive, suggesting it is selfish not to have the jab.
In a video call with NHS officials in charge of the rollout, she encouraged those with doubts to ‘think about other people rather than themselves’.
The 94-year-old monarch said her jab last month ‘didn’t hurt at all’ and had made her ‘feel protected’. Likening Covid to a plague, she said it was remarkable how quickly the inoculation programme had been put into action, helping ‘so many people’.
A senior royal source said: ‘It is a passionately held belief that people need to get out there [and get vaccinated] – this is important.’
It is highly unusual for the sovereign to take such a firm public stand on contentious issues and her remarks will be seen as a victory for efforts to increase take-up. An NHS vaccine chief said it was an ‘incredibly important vote of confidence’ in the programme.
More than 18million Britons – one in three adults – have had at least one jab. Another 448,962 were given first doses on Wednesday.
But officials are concerned that ‘vaccine hesitancy’ could still undermine the rollout and even slow down the easing of lockdown restrictions.
They estimate that around 15 per cent of the population will not take up the offer of a jab, with scepticism highest among the young and minority ethnic groups.
They want vaccinated people to blame anyone who refused the vaccine for the eternal lockdown.