Convenience Big Store: Why the young aren’t getting jabbed 💉

29 July, 2021

In the headlines

"Britain's back in business," says the Daily Mail, as quarantine restrictions end for fully vaccinated travellers from the US and EU. A few weeks ago Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College was warning it was "almost inevitable" coronavirus cases would hit 100,000 a day. Now he says that by autumn "the bulk of the pandemic will be behind us". European leaders who trashed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine have "blood on their hands", says a UK official after a study of more than a million people found the AZ jab was no more likely to cause blood clots than the Pfizer one. Merkel, Macron and others, says the official, are "responsible for the deaths of thousands in developing countries who won't take AZ because of their anti-vaxx scare stories". Charlotte Dujardin became Britain's most decorated female Olympian after taking bronze in the individual dressage on her horse Gio.

Comment of the day

A student protest in London last August. Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Why the young aren't getting jabbed

There's a lack of vaccine enthusiasm in the young, says Georgia Chambers in the I newspaper. Fewer than 60% of those aged 18-25 have had their first jab. It isn't just because they're not worried about Covid – as multiple studies have shown, they don't trust the government. And why would they? Britain's young have spent a "large chunk of their lives" under austerity and carrying the economic and social burden of the 2008 crash. Their university and housing costs soared while the government kept telling them both were perfectly affordable. A "deep-rooted" belief formed that Westminster wasn't serving their best interests.

This has only been reinforced by the pandemic: under-35s account for about 80% of job losses since March 2020 and, rather than tackling youth unemployment, the government has introduced vaccine passports for nightclubs, university lectures and even halls of residence. These are harsh measures, given the young were the last to be offered the vaccine, but they're probably forceful enough to sway people into getting their jabs. Earning back the trust the government so desperately needs is another matter; the Tories risk "losing an entire generation".

Volkswagen's shameful silence over China

If Volkswagen is any yardstick, there's little chance of Germany getting tough about the persecution of the Uighurs, says Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian. China accounts for 40% of VW's car sales and, even though it has a plant in Xinjiang, it's painfully silent on Beijing's woeful human-rights record. Which is all the more dismal because of the forced labour VW used under the Nazis. The result is "a moral car crash". And don't expect Angela Merkel's likely successor to stand up to Xi Jinping – Armin Laschet's home state in western Germany is the terminus for China's giant container trains.

It used to be said that the West could change China through trade, but "who has changed whom"? Coca-Cola and Wall Street "are piling into Chinese markets", and British bankers, lawyers and estate agents are "falling over themselves" to service Chinese apparatchiks. The pandemic gave us a nasty glimpse of the consequences of British dependence on China when we realised how much PPE it supplied us. So the government is right to be nervous about Huawei dominating our 5G networks. I don't expect the boss of VW to speak out "like some fiery human-rights advocate". But he could set an example – VW should publicly acknowledge any human-rights problems in its Chinese supply chain and invite reporters to tour its Xinjiang factory. "History and conscience demand nothing less."

Sport

Tom Pidcock, who won Olympic gold for Britain in the cross-country mountain-biking on Monday, was hit by a car in May. The crash broke his bike in two and left his collarbone in five pieces. The 21-year-old Yorkshireman was told to wait six weeks before getting back in the saddle. He was riding again after just a few days.

Love etc

kitty.spencer/Instagram

Kitty Spencer, the 30-year-old niece of Diana, Princess of Wales, wore five dresses for her wedding to 62-year-old fashion tycoon Michael Lewis over the weekend. "Yes, five," says The Cut. It must have been a "party consumed by costume changes". Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle and Princess Eugenie made do with two; Hailey Bieber, wife of Justin, opted for three; and the singer Ellie Goulding also wore five. As for the groom, it's not known whether he changed outfits, but he did sport velvet slippers for the big day. "Comfort is king."

Noted

A new app allows cat owners to assess their pets' moods, say its developers. Sylvester.ai maps smartphone images of the cat's face on the "feline grimace scale" (FGS), which was developed by Canadian researchers as a tool for assessing when cats feel pain. The app tells you if your cat is happy or unhappy by checking subtle cues: a taut muzzle, squinted eyes, ears rotating outwards or tightly stretched whiskers indicate distress.

Snapshot

Quirk of history

The first mobile phone call was made by Motorola engineer Martin Cooper in April 1973. The person he chose to ring was Joel Engel at AT&T, who had also been racing to create the first mobile. "I called and told him, 'Joel, I'm calling you from a cellular phone, a real cellular phone, a handheld, portable, real cellular phone'," Cooper recalled. Engel didn't have a lot to add to the historic conversation: "My assumption was that he was grinding his teeth."

Snapshot answer

It's the world's largest star sapphire cluster, which was found in the garden of a house in Ratnapura, Sri Lanka. Workmen discovered the pale-blue 510kg cluster a year ago while digging a well for a local gem dealer, and experts have spent months cleaning, analysing and certifying the "Serendipity Sapphire".