HAVE YOU HAD YOUR BOOSTER?

I’m stuck at home today feeling horrible. Incidentally, it’s my wedding anniversary – which I think I can still say, seeing as it was my only wedding, even if our marriage didn’t survive. We would have been celebrating our 32nd year of “wedded bliss” today had we still been together. Strange how time works, I remember that day so clearly, everything about it and I can’t quite believe how long ago it was and how much has changed since then.

ANYWAY, that’s not why I’m feeling horrible today. I had my Covid booster jab yesterday (Moderna if anyone is interested) and despite waving my arm around in large circles like a bowler on my walk home, I still feel like I’ve been kicked by an elephant. Overnight I had a temperature, aches, the shivers and a pounding headache, basically all the side effects you would expect from the vaccine.

It took me a while to pluck up the courage to have the booster, having delayed it because I’d been ill with Covid just six weeks ago and had heard that if you have too many antibodies you can get an adverse reaction. But we all know that the vaccine is designed to protect against severe disease and death and that we have to be prepared for a few side effects. I would have felt invincible having had three jabs and Covid had it not been for the mutant Omicron f**ker and so now we all need all the protection we can get in our battle to stop the spread. I certainly don’t want to catch it again and then pass it on to my mother or anyone else during our Christmas get together.

Apparently cases of the Omicrom variant are doubling every two or three days, which is huge… and they’re currently saying that if you have a cold, it’s probably Covid, so keep testing yourself. By Christmas most scientists are predicting that Omicron will become the dominant strain. Which means that potentially by January it will be responsible for in excess of 1,000 to 2,000 admissions into hospital per day, unless we find a way to slow the spread. According to several doctors I know, the NHS intensive care units are 90% full of people suffering from Covid who haven’t been vaccinated. NINETY PERCENT!! So surely the answer is to get vaccinated, whether you agree with it or not. I know this is a difficult, ethical argument for us all – but in reality most of us didn’t fancy trialling the vaccinations and taking the risks, but surely it’s our civic duty to do so and aren’t we all in this together?

So my question is how do we encourage more people to be vaccinated so that they don’t get ill and then take up all the intensive care beds? I still agree with the freedom of choice, but at what expense? And of course so many people have underlying health conditions or are pregnant and are understandably concerned about the long term effects we still don’t know about. But we are lucky in the rich Western world to have such an effective vaccine roll out – many countries still don’t have that opportunity and that too must be addressed.

I’m rambling now. Really not sure what the answer is. We can’t ask Boris to help because he is losing the plot. I’m not at all surprised to see his slow car crash of a leadership, what with office parties and renovations that will come back to haunt him eventually, because we all know he hovers on the furthest outskirts of the truth, thinking we’re all idiots and don’t deserve to know the details. I mean we’re all up in arms about the office party they had when the rest of us were abiding by rules at best, losing loved ones at worst and what about the students who got fined £10,000 for hosting parties? They should ask for their money back. How extraordinary to see him burn Allegra Stratton at the first hurdle, unlike his support of Dominic Cummings and then rush off to be with his wife Carrie, who was delivering his seventh child. I mean honestly, he’s got too much on his plate. It’s simply not sustainable. Is he going to take paternity leave? He should of course, but who does he leave in charge?