The recent progress in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine feels like the first good news we’ve had all year. Most significantly, a vaccine promises to protect the most vulnerable in society, and the work required to achieve this must be commended and remembered.

Despite this, I can’t help but notice some worrying inconsistencies between the narrative around the vaccine and the decision to impose a second lockdown in the UK. The current vaccine front runners are being developed by Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech, Gamaleya (Sputnik V), and AstraZeneca and Oxford University. These names alone show that the vaccine is the product of the private sector. This should not come as a surprise. Whilst the race to a vaccine has been driven by the urgent need to save lives, it has of course also been motivated by the promise of financial reward. The chief executive of Pfizer sold $5.6m worth of shares on the day that the company’s vaccine breakthrough was announced, and in July the USA signed a $2bn contract for 600m Pfizer vaccines. This activity stands in stark contrast to the UK government’s wholly ineffective track and trace scheme, with its seemingly bottomless budget of £12bn. A vaccine is the product of the innovation, dynamism and competition intrinsic to the private sector, and yet the government still insists on imposing a lockdown that directly restricts private enterprise. This simply doesn’t make sense.

A vaccine is the product of the innovation, dynamism and competition intrinsic to the private sector, and yet the government still insists on imposing a lockdown that directly restricts private enterprise…

The vaccine is also being treated in the media as the light at the end of the tunnel, the bookend to COVID-19. The reality of post-pandemic society will be far from that. The economic devastation wielded by worldwide lockdowns has been done. I laid out the statistical realities of this in full last week: a forecast of 7.7% UK unemployment, £350bn to pay back in public borrowing, and an anticipated 11% contraction of the economy in 2020. With the UK set to enter the worst recession in 300 years, the vaccine is not the panacea it appears to be.

From the outset, I have stressed that the COVID-19 Case Fatality Rate for people under 70 is less than 0.5%. Anyone who has been outraged by this emphasis on a <70 age statistic should consider the medical and logistical realities of administering a COVID-19 vaccine. UK scientists advised that under-50s need not even receive a vaccine. Whilst this proposal was swiftly rejected by ministers, it is a fact that undercuts the priority order identified for rolling out a vaccine. The first to receive the vaccine will be the over-60s and those with underlying health conditions, with a view to later rolling out the vaccine to the entire population. Equally, on the logistical end, Soumya Swaminthan, chief scientist at the WHO, warned in October that young and healthy people may not receive a COVID-19 vaccine until 2022 due to limited resources. We’re certainly unable to continue lockdown for two more years, meaning that the world would likely re-open with many unvaccinated healthy people moving around freely. This shows that the proposed (and realistic!) administration of a vaccine follows the exact same logic of what I have been highlighting all along: that COVID-19 does not pose a threat to the young and healthy. Why then are we still pursuing lockdown and cherry-picking scientific facts to suit political rhetoric?

UK scientists advised that under-50s need not even receive a vaccine… This follows the logic of what I have been highlighting: that COVID-19 does not pose a threat to the young and healthy.

Reports suggest that pandemics will become increasingly common moving forward. We cannot have this handling of COVID-19 as the precedent: panic, lockdown, vaccine, repeat. The full effectiveness of the current vaccines on offer is still uncertain, and we don’t know how long one would take to roll out. What we do know is that lockdowns cause deaths we know we can prevent, with 50,000 missed cancer diagnoses already in 2020 compared to 2019. Given the evidence, the solution is to lift this unnecessary lockdown now and start repairing the economic damage that has already been caused.