The government continually finds bizarre new ways to tackle the pandemic. We were singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to our hands when other countries were plunging into lockdown. We were urged not to wear masks when anyone could see that they were effective. We were all ushered out of pubs and restaurants at 10 pm into a crowded stream of revellers all dumbfounded by government incompetence. At least we didn’t have France’s 7 pm national curfew?
Now, in the latest curious piece of policy, the government looks set to introduce passports for people that are vaccinated. Yes, failing to learn from the disasters of the NHS Test and Trace system, which has gone over budget by £15 billion, the government seems willing to squander many millions more on something that they claim will only be a temporary measure. If they decide to implement the vaccine passport, however, it will probably take months to complete and won’t be nearly as useful as government boffins have imagined.
Undoubtedly, even the Test and Trace App was a failure. It was first reported to be in development in March 2020. Boris Johnson told parliament that it would be in place by June 2020. In June 2020, the first prototype for the app was abandoned (£10 million down the drain). It was not until September that the app came out, and by then it was only used for 2 months before the November lockdown and the tier systems were put in place. By the time the vaccine passports are put into place, I wouldn’t be surprised if we had moved on to the next pandemic.
But I am not only wary that the vaccine passports will become a black hole for government resources. Every other day Rishi Sunak seems to pull shiny coins from behind his ears to fund Covid expenditure. Government spending has ceased to have any meaning. But vaccine passports will also provide people with a false sense of security. It was only recently that Boris crushed people’s hopes of a normal Easter, reminding us that the vaccines are not 100% effective. What then would the vaccine passports guarantee? If two people cannot safely mix indoors now who both have had the vaccine, why will this change with a piece of paper proving it?
Though it is clear that people want a sense of security from the government. 58% of British people support the introduction of the vaccine passport system, even when the vaccine rollout is still ongoing. These rates are relatively lower in younger people – 45% of young people support the introduction of vaccine passports whilst people are being vaccinated, rising to 60% once everyone has been vaccinated. Clearly, I am swimming against the tide.
This age division has been a common theme during coronavirus. The young had to make sacrifices for the old. This was the unescapable reality. But now, instead of rewarding the young, vaccine passports would further penalise them. It will be the octogenarians going wild in Spain’s party cities. The young will have to sit this summer out, as the last, clinging to the mantra that ‘there’s always next year’.
The role of the government should not be to indulge people’s sense of insecurity or germaphobia. The role of the government should be to return the country to a state of normality, now, as coronavirus recedes. The government’s carte blanche of ‘anything to get out of this’ must be abandoned. The means no longer justifies the end in a post-vaccinated society.
Government tactics to increase lockdown compliance were emotionally manipulative. ‘Can you look them in the eyes and tell them you’re helping by staying at home?’ People felt guilty even for doing things that were completely legal in lockdown. I’m sure many were afraid to leave the house. Now the government has to deal with the consequences of the fear they engendered. This begins by ensuring no new restrictions are introduced after 21st June.
I personally am not too fussed about personal liberties. Let’s face it, I didn’t do much with my liberties when I had them. But after a year inside I have started to care more about them. I do not think that it is too much to ask to have a meal in a restaurant without having to present credentials. Baroness Chakrabati, whom I have often strongly disagreed with in the past, has a point: ‘It’s one thing to have a passport to travel internationally, that is a privilege, even a luxury, but participation in local community life is a fundamental right’.
Of course, I can see where the desire for vaccine passports comes from. The government are incentivising the population to get a vaccine. This is particularly relevant to groups who are less likely to take the vaccine if not required, namely the young and certain minority groups. The government hope to reverse the spread of disinformation by compelling people to get a vaccine. But this will not solve the problem. As David Archard, chair of the Nuffield Council on Biotechnics, argues, it is more effective to counter disinformation with accurate information. Any form of government compulsion will engender mistrust.
It might also be of use to reopening travel. It could allow vaccinated people into countries with low levels of vaccination, reducing the risk of spreading Covid upon arrival. But this seems unlikely. The government has already introduced a ‘traffic-light’ system for travel even if you are vaccinated. Our government and governments around the world do not want to allow new Covid strands into their country, immune to their vaccines.
I’m sure many will consign this as overly pessimistic or unhelpful. The government says that we will need to learn to live with the virus, but surely after a year we have appeased it for long enough? The way to rehabilitate society is not by curtailing more of the country’s freedom. The risk, so low now with vaccinations, should be left to the individual. Let normal programming resume.
Image Credits: Creative Commons – “Doctor or nurse filling a syringe with Covid-19 Vaccine” by wuestenigel is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Alternative media: how are we getting our information?
Cast your mind back to the summer of 2007, when the iPhone had just been released, the recession had not happened yet and the idea of getting news from something like an app on your phone was nowhere to be found. That was fourteen years ago. Things change and the way we choose to find information about the world and current affairs is constantly changing too. Facebook and Twitter offer information in short snippets, major newspapers have their own apps, YouTube allows somebody to watch ‘news’ when it pleases them. We no longer need to wait around until the ten o’clock news comes on. So, what are we using, and are they any good?
YouTube has become a platform for both reporters of and commentators on news and politics. I am personally a big fan of TLDR news, in all honesty going to them far more than I do actual old school media outlets, such as the ten o’clock news or the papers. They allow me to pick and choose the topics I want to hear about and view things when I want, unlike TV news which has specified times. This opportunity for choice is an option our grandparents were not given. Mostly though I just like the way they present, addressing the issues individually and as a topic rather than just a headline. This, in my eyes, is the positive side of YouTube news; these are the people successfully attempting to keep up with expected standards of neutrality.
There is a dangerous side to YouTube news as well. On the 15th of March 2019, fifty-one people were killed at a shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, along with another forty injured. According to a report by The Royal Commission of Inquiry, the shooter often accessed extremist material on Youtube. The danger with sites like these, such as YouTube is that the content creators are largely unaccountable, unlike those in the traditional media who are held to higher levels of scrutiny by the courts and legal systems. TLDR are in the minority maintaining the same standards as traditional media. See the likes of Ben Shapiro and Stephen Crowder and their videos. The problem with such sites is that they can allow people to outlet views that are not supported with any real or reliable data.
Twitter is another major source of many people’s information that has arisen during the past two decades.It is a source of both news and personal stories. Many of us use it to see what is going on and to see what the opinions of people are. Yet Twitter is an echo chamber that does not represent the population at large.Twitter’s users are younger which means the political views of the younger demographic are being platformed the most. In the UK over 50% of the nation voted to leave the EU, but if your only news source was Twitter this would likely seem entirely impossible. Though there are micro echo chambers within Twitter which do not follow the standard views for users, these are only small groups. In my questioning of a few people, some said they used Twitter to hear about news stories, and then went on to read about them further elsewhere. This is fine, this is safe. But to use Twitter as a primary source for information and news is dangerous. Twitter’s nature as an echo-chamber can lead to certain opinions appearing more widely supported than they are.
Many people, myself included, use Facebook as a source for news. Lots follow the pages of more traditional media outlets such as The Guardian or Financial Times on Facebook, or even Cherwell. Likewise, this is a legitimate use of social media; Facebook alerts us of the stories, and then we go off and read the articles from the Facebook pages which we would otherwise find on apps or the websites of the media outlets. This is similar to how many of the people use Instagram: they would find stories on the platform the same as people do on Facebook and the stories which interested them they read up on further. However, the 2020 election shows that Facebook most certainly does not avoid the issues that both Twitter and YouTube have. The unfounded QAnon conspiracy theory, that Donald Trump was secretly fighting a ring of paedophiles in the highest ranks of the United States, was largely to be found on Facebook, and other such far-right ideologies use the platform as their hub. In January, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook is stopping recommending both civic and political groups. He stated that Facebook wished “to make sure the communities people connect with are healthy and positive.” The fact is that on Facebook these communities are often not healthy and are often misleading.
It is quite surprising that memes have become a form of political exchange and currency. We have all seen memes about Boris, and about both the 2016 and 2020 American elections. These are less a source of political information but, rather, a source of influence. Memes have become like the modern poster; they are not a form of information presentation but are rather a way in which viewpoints can be presented to seem commonplace, grab viewer’s attention and spread, and thus one person can create a meme that appears to be supported by thousands. Furthermore, WhatsApp has accentuated the spread, particularly amongst the older generation.
On the 20th of October 2020, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez live-streamed Among Us on Twitch (an online streaming site) which received 400,000 views. Recently, Twitch has seen a shift in its most popular videos, with the chat section overtaking the gaming section as the largest. Twitch has seen the rise of figures such as the political commentator Hasan Piker, who gave a constant stream on twitch over the election period, which at its height had 225,000 viewers. Of course, those watching such streams tend to be younger, with the average age of a Twitch user being in their late teens and early twenties. Research by Cambridge University has suggested that getting younger voters engaged in politics can lead to a lasting impact on later elections as the voters are caught younger. The Obama election caught onto this, placing ads in games on Xbox live in both 2008 and 2012. Hasan Piker believes he is popular because he is more relatable and down-to-earth than the standard news anchor. Unlike the mainstream press, those on Twitch are free to show their biases, and thus where they lie on the political spectrum is clear to see and that allows a viewer to react to the information appropriately. Twitch has yet to see the dangers concerning political information that Facebook and Twitter have concerning radicalisation and misinformation, but it will come as the audience for political information on the streaming service grows.
Are these sources of information good ones? As aforementioned, it is not surprising that people are turning to these new forms of information gathering. They are suited to and adapted for the viewer. Twitch really demonstrates why these sources of news and information are becoming more popular. Because people are social media anyway, YouTube and Twitch are the standards of our generation much like TV was to the generation before. As we spend hours each day on these sites, it makes sense that we turn to them for information, as we are there anyway. We have access to all the information we could ever want on our phones, so these new forms of media and information are not only new but are the new normal. However, until they are regulated more carefully the dangers associated with using them will persist, so use them, but be careful in their use. Facebook, Twitter, Twitch and YouTube are great sources of information and will become the main ones for many of us. This in itself is not a negative; technology adapts, and the way people live their lives adapts with technology – but so must regulations and laws. If these are to be sources of our news and information, then they must be held to the same standards as traditional sources of news such as newspapers and TV news.
Image Credit: CartridgeSave via Flickr & Creative Commons.