Scapegoating the Unvaccinated

Unless they have dispensations for medical reasons, Tony Blair thinks they're idiots. Emmanuel Macron wants to "piss them off" and carry on doing so until the pandemic ends. And Boris Johnson mumbled something uncomprehendingly negative about them at Tuesday's Covid press conference. At home and overseas, we're seeing hints of a new biopolitical strategy: making the unvaccinated scapegoats for our present difficulties. And from the standpoint of our Tory government, it's the logical culmination of the politics of the pandemic they've peddled for two years.

As recently argued, prioritising public health sits in tension with received statecraft and governance that has prevailed these last 40 years. The messaging pushed by medicine and heeded by millions of people was to act as if they themselves were infected. I protect you and you protect me. If everyone acted in the same way, then transmission would not happen as easily. To put it another way, conduct was to be other-focused as opposed to self-interested. And this advice undoubtedly prevented hundreds of thousands of infections from taking place, and with it tens of thousands of cases of serious illness and death. But we can't well have a germ of solidaristic behaviour taking root, no matter how many times the Tories and their press helpers heralded the Blitz spirit.

I don't intend to go through everything the Tories have done since, except to note they have struggled (and largely succeeded) in reversing the axis of public health messaging. As time went on restrictions were portrayed as overly burdensome, even if they were something as simple as wearing a mask. Freedom days came and went, the middle class were encouraged to eat out, plans were afoot to enforce a mass return to work ... and then another two lockdowns, more restrictions, and then none again. Refusing to fix the roof when the sun was shining, to borrow a favourite phrase of a former Tory PM, the much-hyped freedoms were merely moments in which the virus could circulate at lower rates while the Tories didn't do anything to prepare for a winter wave nor a more infectious variant. Amid the incoherence and the refusal to intervene until it was too late, public health became more a matter of personal responsibility. Which suits the Tories down to the ground. Catching Covid wasn't their fault - contracting it is either hard luck or not taking the necessary precautions. You are the master of your own health, again.

Summer 2020 was when we saw a first overt push using public health as a new tool of divide and rule. Suddenly the press were awash with stories about young people having parties in contravention of the rules, and raves taking place deep in the woods that were a bit laissez-faire on social distancing. Less hands, face, space, more Everybody In The Place.. The broadcast news showed heat vision police footage to whip up concern. The yoof, always a potentially dangerous cast of characters in the right wing imaginary, were now responsible for keeping Covid going because they were flouting the regs. The numbers appeared to show it - infections among the youngest adult age brackets showed stubbornly higher rates than the general population. What didn't receive attention was the real reason why the young were disproportionately affected: because many of them had returned to work in hospitality and were therefore getting it and transmitting it in the workplace. It wasn't parties but the monomaniacal Tory obsession with forcing people back into work. Johnson, Sunak and co were Covid's useful idiots, not young people themselves. This angle of Covid scapegoating did not last long: it was hard to maintain the pretence when children were drummed back to school and further and higher education reopened, handily helping distribute the disease.

Now, time is increasingly ripe for another round of scapegoating. With the Tories on the ropes and Johnson's authority imperilled, if not now, when? The ground appears fertile for such a strategy. Early last month, YouGov found clear majorities among all age groups and political persuasions for bans on the unvaccinated going into "non-essential" shops and attending indoor events. Already, there is an identifiable 'out' population who, thanks to media coverage, are associated with the fringe idiocy of the anti-vax/Covid-denialist movement. If they're targeted, it's not terribly likely the wider population would listen to their concerns with a sympathetic ear. Second, with all the information available and demonstrable lower risk of illness from the vaccine than catching Covid, refusing the jabs marks one out as selfish and uninterested in keeping others safe. They've turned their nose up at the collective sacrifice made and seem to think being potential bed blockers in our overstretched hospitals won't happen to them. As crass as Macron's comments were, there are plenty on these shores who would lap them up. One should never underestimate the collective desire to give unworthy others a bit of a slap.

We should not forget about the politics of this, though. If the Tories go down this road it's not because they want to see people fit and healthy. Their seeming indifference/herd immunity approach to letting Omicron tear through schools and workplaces should put that notion to bed. Using the unvaccinated as scapegoats gets them off the hook. The lack of business support, pitiful sick pay, no meaningful health measures except for wearing a mask, the cavalcade of failures, their prioritising of their class interests can be memory holed and depoliticised if our prolonged health crisis is pinned on Piers Corbyn and his ilk. The Tories are past masters at the politics of divide and rule. Keep an eye out for it.

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