The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
1 Corinthians 15v26.
I don’t normally do politics here, so let’s keep this brief. At the moment, it seems like anyone who announces that they don’t particularly want the covid vaccine or thinks that vaccine passports might be a bad idea gets lumped in with conspiracy theorists and treated as the cheerful vanguard of the polio revival. What people seem to miss is that when we talk about the covid vaccine, we’re talking about vaccinating against a disease very different to the other diseases that warrant universal (or near-universal) immunisation.
You can download and look at the statistics here for mean and median ages of covid-related death in the UK between October and December. With the exception of the mean ages of death for men, all of the figures here are over the age of eighty. Those stats under eighty showed that the mean age of death involving covid for men was 79.2, and mean age of death of covid was 79.4. Still what we might call a good innings in ordinary times. Very, very few young people die, and for many it is no worse than the flu. Overall, the fatality rate is probably somewhere between 99-99.5%.
By contrast, we can look at the diseases that we do vaccinate children against. Smallpox (now eradicated, so of course we don’t currently vaccinate children against it) had a 30% fatality rate, and could leave survivors pretty badly disfigured. Polio can cause paralysis, even if many recover. Rubella can cause pregnant women to miscarry. Measles has a higher mortality rate, and complications are more likely in children under the age of five. My point is this: the diseases for which we usually vaccinate (and should vaccinate) are diseases that a) have significantly higher mortality rates, or b) affect children in severe ways, and can have lifelong effects. Covid is more dangerous than the flu, but it is still the case that the people most at risk of one are most at risk of the other. And we do not insist on giving every member of the country the flu vaccine.
Covid is neither of these things. The idea that everyone in the UK should be kept under lockdown until everyone is vaccinated is insanity, and sets an alarming precedent for governmental powers. The cost to the young will be enormous in missed education and economic contraction. Death will always be present until Christ’s return: it is the last enemy to be destroyed. As Moses said, ‘The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.’ (Psalm 90v10). The groups at the highest risk of death have all been vaccinated in the UK. It is the fool who continues to stay in because he believes there is a lion outside (Prov. 22v13). It is time to return to living.
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