Dan Wootton: The decision to introduce vaccine passports is 'shameful'

I hoped I would arrive back to the UK with some sense of normality returning to what should be a post-pandemic country. Covid-19 is fast becoming endemic all over the world. Britain should be leading the effort to show we must not waste any more precious days of our even more precious short lives and live with this damn thing.

The ludicrous and terrifying situation the failed Zero Covid nations, Australia and New Zealand, now find themselves in prove that an elimination strategy was a dangerous folly.

Instead the spectre of two more hysterical decisions hang over us. The first is the government’s determination to overturn the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation’s sensible decision not to recommend a mass vaccination programme for 12 to 15-year-olds.

For months, we’ve heard that the JCVI is an independent body that ministers and health officials have implored us to respect. Follow the science, they said. But the moment the JCVI made a decision against jabbing completely healthy youngsters at close to zero threat of dying from Covid, they want to throw the science out the window.

Sure, Israel and Australia and lots of other countries want to go even further and jab all those over five-years-old - we don’t necessarily have to follow them. If Chris Whitty and the other Chief Medical Officers overturn the JCVI recommendation, as expected, then we’ll know for sure that they’ll only follow the science that suits their Covid-centric political agenda.

The second decision relates to the introduction of vaccine passports. In January, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi gave us a cast-iron guarantee they were out of the question. He tweeted: “We have no plans to introduce vaccine passports. No one has been given or will be required to have a vaccine passport.”

That turned out to be a screeching u-turn. Zahawi has confirmed that vaccine passports will be required for large venues, mass gatherings and nightclubs from as early as the end of the month.

The decision is shameful. It further strips away our liberties. It creates a two-tier, biosecurity state. And it’s not even scientifically sound, as we know that the double-jabbed still transmit Covid.

So why bother?