Patrick Christys: Sajid Javid is using Christmas as a weapon to push the Covid booster jab

There is no need for any more lockdowns because the NHS must learn to live with Covid. These aren’t my words, these are the words of the NHS providers chief, Chris Hopson.

So why then are we in a situation where our Health Secretary is holding Christmas to ransom?

Sajid Javid is using Christmas as a weapon in order to push the Covid booster jab – saying that you better all get it otherwise, essentially, the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ might not go ahead.

Christmas is not the preserve of any government – it certainly shouldn’t be used as a political football. But, the football analogy is actually quite a good one because the government keeps moving the goalposts on what it means to be fully vaccinated.

A government insider confirmed yesterday that people wanting to travel, probably from within a few months time, will have to have had their booster jab if they’re eligible. It means that fully vaccinated means three jabs, not two and even proof of a negative test won’t be enough to avoid travellers having to pay for quarantine and testing if they want to go abroad.

This isn’t me having a go at the vaccine, loads of you will be thinking – this isn’t a big deal, just take it. And that’s fine. But it confirms what I think we all already thought would happen, which is that we’re going to be locked in a never ending cycle of vaccinations and that probably, from now on, elements of your personal freedom will depend on whether or not you’ve had your latest jab. But it also just seems to be going a bit further than that, doesn’t it.

Pfizer is now looking to get approval to vaccinate 12-15-year-olds, this is despite the JCVI recommending against it. A recent study in America showed more children actually died of flu than Covid in the previous year and, given another study published last week also showed that those who are double jabbed may be as likely to transmit the virus as those who haven’t had a jab at all, it does beg the question why are we doing this?

Some will say it’s because the vaccine does, mercifully, appear to reduce the severity of the virus and the chance of hospitalisation, others may point to the fact that we’ve seen a lot of Tory sleaze recently and Big Pharma has been found to give groups of MPs and peers that campaign on health issues hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in “hidden” funding that could hand them “undue influence”.

Just returning to the issue of Sajid Javid holding a religious festival to ransom – he’s being backed up by vast swathes of the media who are tripping over themselves to report that Covid cases are surging, spiking and rising.

Well, they’re not.

Saturday’s figures show the number of daily positive tests fell to 30,693, down almost 11 per cent on the previous Saturday. Whether Javid actually means his Christmas threat or not, that’s not really the point.

This government has presided over, and indeed caused, the biggest mental health crisis this nation has ever seen. There will be people across the country now, especially the elderly, who are clinging on to the hope that they will see their family this Christmas and now there is this very hollow threat that it won’t take place.

Our government has repeatedly tried to scare us into submission, whether it’s ‘don’t kill granny’, videos of young people struggling with Covid to try to get uptake among teenagers, the Nepalese variant, which didn’t exist…and now cancelling Christmas.

I just can’t help but feel that these are bully boy tactics and gaslighting – and we didn’t sign up for this.