Editorial: Covid passports were best way out of lockdown

The Northern Ireland Appeal Court has ruled that Covid passports were legal. This is a welcome, albeit unsurprising, judgement.

The whole issue and urgency of the debate around Covid passports has passed. The need for such certification of having been jabbed in order to be able to get into particular places such as bars and cinemas has long since passed.

But it flagged up a troubling aspect of the coronavirus saga, in which many people got things upside down. The more dubious aspect of the Covid panic was lockdowns, not Covid passports. A large minority of highly respected, non hysterical medical experts warned that lockdowns would cause more harm than they would prevent.

They were not claiming that coronavirus was harmless, or denying that lockdowns would save many lives. They were saying that the average net harm to society would be greater than the harm caused by a letting Covid spread. Such harm would come in the form of loneliness, educational loss to young people, immense economic damage ruining livelihoods, and – perhaps worst – increased incidences of early death caused by diseases being diagnosed later than they would have been detected otherwise.

Vaccines, however, were the great success story of the pandemic and Britain – one of the world’s scientific centres – was at the helm of developing them. Most people dismissed superstitious claims about the harm caused by jabs and readily took them. Vaccines were the route out of lockdown.

But so-called libertarians, including much of the Tory Party, fell into confusion on this point and became adamantly opposed to requirements that people show vaccine proof, having been relaxed about lockdowns. The jab programme was a success and it was fair to open up society first to those who availed of it.