MORE than 1,500 people are cross about an advert for Tesco’s supermarkets featuring Father Christmas and his covid vaccine passport.

Reading on the BBC news no less that this is the most complained-about advert of the year has galvanised me into action to complain more! How can 1,500 people in a country of 68 million be so significant they make the news!

Perhaps the prominence given to this complaint means that it’s worth writing in about some of the many adverts that are properly harmful.

I’d like to cancel adverts that promise impossible things for example like wrinkle-free skin, car insurance that will actually pay out and magic yoghurt that can cure stomach problems.

When a minority like the covid-deniers and anti-vaxxers are vocal, the silent majority need to wake up and speak out!

False balance in reporting is also an ongoing problem – we give equal time to flat-earthers on so called ‘discussion shows’ as we do to, eg, Sir David Attenborough talking about climate change.

So, the unrepresentative views of people whose expertise comes from ‘Pete down the pub’ and an afternoon on Google often get more air-time than the objective academic conclusions of people whose decades of research make them true experts.

The premise for the Tesco advert complaints, according to the Advertising Standards Authority, is that picturing Father Christmas at passport control needing proof of vaccination is ‘coercive and encourages medical discrimination.’

Well good surely regarding medical discrimination?

We absolutely should take steps to stop the vectors for transmission of deadly diseases, also known as human beings, transporting illness and carrying the potential for death or disability to others who are more vulnerable.

I don’t have a right to risk the health of other people and if fictional Father Christmas were infected with covid he’d be shedding an awful lot of virtual virus down all those chimneys and into people’s homes. So good on Tesco-land for requiring pretend evidence of pretend vaccination at our borders.

A story about Father Christmas needing a covid jab to travel is not ‘coercive’. Coercion in ethical terms refers to forcing a person to do something against their will.

There is nothing coercive about an advert picturing a pretend character needing a jab to carry out their job. It’s certainly arguable that the story line has some influence as a public health message, but in my view, with a frail elderly mother I want to protect, that’s a good thing.

If people want the right not to vaccinate, they must accept the consequences. I wouldn’t make vaccination mandatory. However, schools should be able to refuse unvaccinated children unless they have a medical reason why they cannot be vaccinated. Medical staff and all healthcare professionals should be required to be vaccinated before treating vulnerable people. Why is this even an issue?

It’s as though the balance of rights and responsibilities has tipped to favour nationwide toddlerdom where the mighty ‘but I want’ from the screaming two-year-old has waged battle and won over the needs of everybody else in the room. So I say to vaccine deniers – if you had a choice between sending your asthmatic daughter to a school where everybody had been vaccinated or a school where nobody had been vaccinated, which would you choose? Not many will choose the unvaccinated option if they answer honestly.

This week when the US celebrates Thanksgiving, I am thinking about what I’m grateful for too. Top of the list right now is health and the dedication of researchers and scientists to prevent, cure and treat the world’s diseases. I am especially grateful to all the volunteers and people who have come back out of retirement to assist the health service without whom, I would not be the extremely grateful recipient of a booster jab. Every medic and research scientist I know was in a mighty rush to jab themselves and their loved ones. That tells you something.