Altruism would undermine UK vaccine strategy | Letters

Donating your jab would undermine the rationale behind the prioritisation scheme, writes John Main. Plus letters from Ruth Eversley and Linda Murgatroyd

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