It would be noble to give your vaccine slot to others (Letters, 2 February), but it would undermine the rationale behind the prioritisation scheme. The elderly and vulnerable are hugely more likely to get seriously ill if they catch Covid and require hospitalisation. The chief aim of the strategy is to prevent the NHS being even more overwhelmed. So your morally responsible readers would, as well as forgoing vaccination, also need to refuse hospitalisation should they catch Covid.
Incidentally, that is also the unstated corollary of any “libertarian” strategy that argues that the toll of shutdown will outweigh the toll of unrestricted Covid. That argument might even be true, but only if you think it is acceptable for every hospital bed in the country to be filled with a Covid sufferer. Or, more probably, think it would be OK to refuse hospital admission to Covid sufferers deemed to have had their good innings.
John Main
Great Ayton, North Yorkshire
• Could I ask all those older readers offering to donate their vaccines to think again? Even if you think you are not a valued member of your community, your loved ones may disagree. And if you do acquire the virus, the cost to the NHS and society is likely to be higher than if you were younger.
Ruth Eversley
Paulton, Somerset
• It is worrying that the government’s messaging about vaccines is giving rise to such misunderstanding that 81-year-old Anne O’Brien’s son thinks that, once she has had it, she will think about starting to see her friends again (‘They’ve been ignored’: older people cared for at home face vaccine delays, 1 February).
We should probably not be changing our behaviour until almost all of us have had both doses of the vaccine and the prevalence of Covid is much lower. We will need to keep some elements of social distancing long term, as well as adjusting our expectations.
Previous pandemics have resurfaced for years, so we should not expect things to change once we have received a first dose. The government needs to address the issue of public understanding to build on the success of the vaccine programme, rather than trying to score short-term points in the presentation of statistics.
Linda Murgatroyd
London
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