Govt Will Blame Unvaccinated Minority When Lockdown Return, Conservative Implies

LONDON, ENGLAND - DECEMBER 08: British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson watches as nurse Rebe
Frank Augstein - Pool / Getty Images
Victoria Friedman

A Conservative MP has suggested that if lockdown returns, it will be the fault of people who declined vaccines getting ill and clogging up the NHS.

MP for Ipswich Tom Hunt told talkRADIO on Wednesday: “There is a chance that some restrictions might be brought back partly as a result of unvaccinated people — people who have turned down the vaccine — winding up in hospital.

“I imagine the vast majority of these individuals who are refusing the vaccine, if they did get Covid as a result and got badly ill, I think they’d be in the hospital, putting pressure on our NHS services that need to be applied.”

Mr Hunt appears to be using the same level of threats and guilt tactics employed by the most senior ministers in government to force the especially younger generation to be vaccinated.

On so-called ‘Freedom Day’, Prime Minister Johnson made the extraordinary announcement that from late September, entry to nightclubs would only be guaranteed to those who have been fully vaccinated, introducing for the first time domestic vaccine passports to undertake everyday life in Britain.

In adding further pressure on the younger generation to be vaccinated, the prime minister is also reportedly considering vaccine passports mandatory for university students who want to attend in-person lectures and live on campus. Johnson also implied in an interview with LBC on Wednesday that vaccines may be needed for travel and festivals.

Senior minister Michael Gove has also openly expressed his belligerence towards those who refuse vaccinations, calling them “selfish”, adding that those who “deliberately refuse to get vaccinated and there are certain venues and certain events that require a certain level of safety, then… those venues and those events will be barred to you”.

While most restrictions ended on July 19th in what Prime Minister Boris Johnson had previously pledged would be the “irreversible” end of lockdown, Conservative MPs have warned that lockdowns could come back again in a matter of weeks.

Mark Harper, chairman of the lockdown-sceptic Covid Recovery Group (CRG), wrote earlier this month that “it’s only a number of weeks until the autumn arrives”, and with it comes the rise in seasonal respiratory infections that could come with the reintroduction of masks, social distancing, and other restrictions.

The MP then quoted documents published recently from the influential Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE), which advises the government on its pandemic strategies, which stated that “stronger measures may be desirable for autumn and winter”.

MP Sir Chris Walker also predicted last month that “even if we do unlock for a short time at the backend of Summer, I suspect we’ll be in much harder lockdowns come the Autumn.”

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