Young people have given their all on Covid
Government should incentivise vaccination, not threaten twentysomethings with vaccine passports.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
Young people are awful.
They know it all. They’re insufferably woke. They speak in barely decipherable code. They stan everything that slaps but get salty when something seems sus and when they’re not calling out or clapping back, they’re cancelling each other for clout. They’ve done for the English language what Beeching did for the railways.
The worst thing about the young, though, is that they’re young: they have their whole lives ahead of them and at least another decade before dread phrases like ‘self-assessment tax return’ and ‘quiet night in’ enter their lexicon.
But even though Generation Z brings out the millennial fogey in me, I wouldn’t swap places with them after the year and a half they’ve been through. Now, I know what you’re thinking: we’ve all been put through the wringer these past 16 months. We have, but the sacrifices made by young people have been especially difficult — and humbling.
At the very moment they were entering their prime, they were locked in shoebox student flats for months on end, forbidden to go out for a drink or to a club or a party. They had none of the usual undergraduate opportunities to make friends and were forced by government edict to remain celibate. The university education for which they had gone into debt amounted to sporadic lectures conducted via Zoom over patchy broadband connections.
Often employed as waiters, baristas and retail workers, they were more likely to be furloughed — or laid off altogether. They had to forgo the traditional first summer holiday without the parents and instead of getting mad wi’ it in Magaluf, they had to settle for a Becks in the back garden.
All this, let’s not forget, for a virus that is markedly less harmful to the young and healthy. We’re forever harking back to earlier generations when we talk about sacrifice and selflessness when all we need do is observe how twentysomethings have put their lives on hold, at a precious time they will never get back, to protect the elderly and vulnerable. They may be humourless and politically strident but there is nothing off about their moral compass. A lot of parents can be very proud of the young adults they raised.
That is why it is troubling to read data from the Office for National Statistics showing only 57 per cent of 16-to-24 year olds in Scotland have Covid antibodies. Less than 10 per cent in this cohort have been fully vaccinated while, among Scots aged between 25 and 34, only 21 per cent have had both jabs.
What is driving this? Given the age profile, we can probably rule out anti-vaxxerism. Youngsters use social media to make TikTok videos, not post 10,000-word ALL-CAPS screeds about how vaccines are CIA tracking devices. Yet, it's not quite vaccine hesitancy, either. Like everyone at that age, youngsters think they're invincible and getting jabs for a virus that mainly passes them by seems superfluous. There is probably, I would guess, some resentment, too, at having made the sacrifices they were ask to and still being unable to resume their normal lives.
It is galling for them to hear Boris Johnson contemplate vaccine passports for entry into nightclubs, even though the typical clientele for such establishments is least at risk of serious health effects from Covid. That the Prime Minister would immediately jump on them and threaten something so illiberal has many young people's backs up. Boris, the passionate libertarian who railed against ID cars, is happy to cast aside his concerns for the autonomy and privacy of individuals provided they are in their twenties and don't vote Tory.
The government is hopeless when it comes to these voters. Here is the first generation since 1945 of which a modern-day Macmillan would have to admit: You've never had it so bleak. Not for them the days of leaving school on Friday and starting a job or an apprenticeship on Monday. Young people today face a labour market in which being bright, capable and hard-working is no longer qualification enough. In 1980, 68,000 graduates left university with a first degree; in 2020, it was 423,000.
No generation has benefited from technology, openness and liberal attitudes quite like this one, yet the economic and social obstacles in their path are far more stubborn than anything that greeted their parents and grandparents. Forty years ago, one in three 16-to-24 year olds were homeowners; today it’s less than one in ten. In parts of Glasgow, renting a one-bedroom flat costs between 40 and 49 per cent of the average twenty-something’s income. Four decades ago, the average UK private rent was ten per cent of income.
Given the general lack of interest in the economic plight of the young, it is all the more commendable that they have shown so much social responsibility during the pandemic. If they are beginning to lose patience, they could hardly be blamed. Months of putting others first and all they get in return is prime ministerial finger-wagging and the threat of having to prove their vaccine status to go clubbing.
Not only are vaccine passports illiberal and ill-judged, not only do they come with serious questions about data protection and medical privacy, they are a wrong-headed and counterproductive way to go about boosting uptake among the young. We should be looking instead to the United States, where many states have their own incentive schemes to draw in wary citizens.
Colorado, Ohio and Kentucky are among the states offering the chance to win scholarships or substantial sums towards the cost of college tuition. Arkansas, Maryland and New York are handing out lottery tickets with jackpots of $1m, $2m and $5m, respectively.
Some incentives are more dubious. Residents of Maine are being tempted with season tickets to the Portland Sea Dogs, a baseball team that hasn’t won a championship in 15 years, while New Jerseyans who roll up their sleeve for both doses stand a chance of winning dinner with state governor Phil Murphy and his wife, Tammy.
Meanwhile, Indiana is positively skinflint, promising Hoosiers nothing more than a box of cookies for getting their inoculation. Louisiana’s Covid incentive scheme, ‘Shot for a Shot’, is gifting hard liquor to those who get fully jabbed, suggesting the pelican state is going for 100 per cent vaccination among print journalists.
It's in everyone's interests to get as many people vaccinated as possible, so even if the idea of such giveaways sticks in your craw, think of them the way the Americans do: as an investment in getting life back to normal as soon as possible. The Scottish and UK governments should give serious consideration to similar schemes in this country and work together to deliver them promptly so that vaccination rates among young people reach parity with those in older segments of the population.
Incentives should be geared towards the financial hardships facing young people: a lottery for a brand new house, the chance to have your rent paid for a year, forgiveness of your student loans, 12 months worth of grocery bills covered. There should also be some of the trivial yet eye-catching rewards seen Stateside, such as free drinks, the latest iPhone or, adopting New Jersey's questionable definition of 'prize', dinner with Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell.
Hectoring young people will not work. The 'vaccine buses' which allowed revellers at the weekend's Latitude Festival to get jabbed on their way to see their favourite band will have done more to push up vaccination rates than any threat or scolding from those in authority. The same goes for the welcome announcement of on-campus vaccination sites in Scotland's universities.
Young people have done their bit during this pandemic. If free pints or their bills paid off is the price of reaching herd immunity, it would not only be a sound investment but an overdue recognition. They may have terrible patter and terrible politics but the kids are all right — and they deserve to hear it.
Originally published in the Scottish Daily Mail on July 26, 2021.