Broadway composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has said that those who decline vaccines are “selfish” and similar to people who decide to drive drunk and kill others.
“I do think it’s selfish, because, I mean, look at it this way, I mean, you could just say, I would like to go out and have a drink tonight and drive home, and accidentally I kill somebody,” said the 73-year-old, best known for his work on musicals including Cats and Jesus Christ Superstar, in an interview with the BBC.
“Now, I mean, it seems to me that nobody’s going to go out and deliberately infect anybody with Covid, but it’s completely wrong if we know the science. I was on the Oxford vaccine trial last year for this reason.
“We know that the vaccines are very effective and we know that they are really, broadly speaking, unbelievably safe,” he claimed.
His BBC interlocutor put it to him that he was making a “very stark comparison” between deadly drunk drivers and people who would prefer not to be vaccinated, but Webber was unmoved: “Well, I don’t know. I think you could argue it’s your choice. I feel very strongly now that there are really now people who have got to realise that by not having the vaccine they’re affecting an enormous number of people’s jobs and livelihoods,” he suggested.
Webber, who was until recently an unelected lawmaker representing Britain’s governing Conservative Party in the House of Lords,
Webber, who was until recently an unelected lawmaker representing Britain’s governing Conservative Party in the House of Lords, did not receive universal acclaim for his comments, with talkRadio host Ian Collins saying: “I don’t want to live in a place where the government strap me down and give a state-sanctioned jab.”
Collins also questioned whether Webber’s comparison between drunk drivers and the unvaccinated stands up, given millions of people in the most vulnerable groups have already been inoculated in Britain.
Telegraph writer Philip Johnston, however, noted that, until 1907, British parents “who refused to have their children immunised [against smallpox] without good reason were fined”, and that compulsory vaccination is not unheard of in what it is generally thought of as “the free world”:
Forcing people to take medication is considered anathema in a free society though several democratic countries, such as France, do have compulsory vaccination programmes. Some withdraw state help or even schooling to children if their parents refuse to have them immunised.
Nevertheless, Johnston went on to say that while, in his view, the “anger” of people like Webber who want to see restrictions lifted is “understandable”, it should be “directed at ministers and the [Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE)] modellers urging them to take disproportionate and unjustified decisions to extend the lockdown even in the face of a waning pandemic” rather than the unvaccinated.
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