Why vaccination ‘strategy’ gives me the needle

IGUESS I will appear a wimp if I confess to being needle-phobic! I first discovered this some 60 years ago, but I will save you the gory details. Normally I can generally avoid any requirement for a needle to be thrust into me. For all these years I have declined a needle at the dentist when a filling is required, and I can confirm a filling simply does not cause me any pain.

Now the whole nation knows that sooner or later we will all experience the vaccine that Boris has told us about. For many months he was sure that a vaccine would arrive before Christmas. That was a pretty good prediction because we had not only the Pfizer model, but then we had the English Oxford AstraZeneca version and we had ordered 100 million of this vaccine!

With our population somewhere around 66 million, it is hardly surprising that so many people thought we would soon be out of the restrictions and getting on with our lives again.

Doubtless this is what caused the telephone lines to the doctors to become jammed as attempts were made to join the queue for a job. Now we all know that we have to sit tight and await our turn for the surgery to call us!

Just to make life more complicated, we have a new more virulent strain of this virus and we are back in lockdown – this time for a few weeks rather than days.

The speed at which Boris closed the schools, just a day after saying they were to open does suggest that there is no strategy involved in the decision-making and it is just a matter of guesswork until the scientists decide we need to follow a different path.

If the Government does have a strategy, then I struggle to identify what it is. I learnt this lesson when I noted the past attempts to supply

PPE, and also a testing strategy. Even now the medical profession is still seeking the correct PPE, and the mess of testing questions any recognisable strategy to deal with this essential.

Now the latest lockdown has begun, I am listening to the news to identify the strategic plan for injecting us all so that the schools can reopen after half term – five weeks away!

Boris has said that the injection programme will cater for two million jabs a week. Given he also identified that there are 25 million people that are at high risk of catching the virus, my maths suggests that means this strategy of two million injections a week will take until Easter to complete!

Yet again, I think we have a plan that is not going to work and we can expect another U-turn as a new option is tried.

There are many very skilled managers in the UK who, if asked, could develop a workable and practical strategy for a massive scale vaccination programme.

I doubt that any will be asked to deliver, and if they did, I would put money on their reluctance to work to a delivery of two million jabs a week. That is a plan that is destined for failure.

It seems that me and senior management may well reach our turn in the queue for our first jab soon.

This gives me a problem. How am I going to deal with my first sight of that needle?

I had determined I could decline the jab as apparently 25% of the population are expected to do, and simply take my chance that when all those that have the jab will ensure I do not catch it. My children do not like this plan and I think I am going to have to have a large brandy and then get on with it. Then all I will have to do is find some more courage for the eventual second jab!

The speed at which Boris closed the schools, just a day after saying they were to open does suggest that there is no strategy involved...