Prime Minister Boris Johnson has suggested that “Getting jabbed… not just for ourselves” but for others as well is “the teaching of Jesus Christ” in a Covid-heavy Christmas message.
“After two years of this pandemic, I can’t say that we’re through it,” Prime Minister Johnson began, somewhat less than optimistically given the circumstances.
“How can I, when Omicron is surging, when we all know we must together try to stop the spread of this new variant?” he continued woefully.
“We must test ourselves and take extra care when meeting elderly or vulnerable relatives. We know that things remain difficult,” the Tory leader asserted, adding on a slightly brighter note that people could at least “celebrate together” this Christmas — before marring it with a depressing suggestion that Britons “raise our glasses to those who can’t be with us.”
Prime Minister Johnson further suggested that the reason families have not been separated this year is because “we’ve been giving each other an invisible and invaluable present” in the run up to Christmas — namely “that vaccination”, which he said “protects us and stops us infecting others.”
In fact, the BBC reported in October that people “who have had two vaccine doses can be just as infectious as those who have not been jabbed”, citing research published in The Lancet.
The Harvard Gazette did report earlier this month that “People who are vaccinated for SARS-CoV-2 but get breakthrough infections may be less likely to spread the virus because they shed it for a shorter period than unvaccinated people”, citing research by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, but it is unclear on what basis Johnson felt able to imply that vaccination “stops us infecting others” altogether.
“I hope I can be forgiven for taking pride in the immense spirit of neighbourliness that the people of this country have shown,” the Prime Minister continued, waxing lyrical on people “Getting jabbed not just for themselves, for ourselves, but for friends and family and everyone we meet” and how “that, after all, is the teaching of Jesus Christ, whose birth is at the heart of this enormous festival, that we should love our neighbours as we love ourselves.”
“And so let’s think of all those who are being good neighbours and thinking of others,” he went on, somewhat labouring the point but stopping short of directly attacking the unvaccinated as bad neighbours — or bad Christians.
For the unvaccinated and un-boosted, he said only that there “is still a wonderful thing you can give your family and the whole country, and that is to get that jab,” punching towards the camera for emphasis.
Johnson’s abrasive Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Sajid Javid, has shown rather less carrot and more stick towards the unvaccinated in recent days, however, guilt-tripping them to “really think about the damage they are doing to society” on national television.
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