My sleeve’s rolled up for the jab

Apparently up to 50% of South Africans will refuse the Covid-19 vaccination. First though, a disclaimer: back in 1998, I became an anti-vaxxer. Andrew Wakefield had published his MMR “findings” and fear is contagious; fear is addictive.

I was scared, distrustful of the motives of Big Pharma, holding my babies close because nobody was going to stick needles into them when they weren’t even sick.

Fast forward, and one of my babies qualified as an immunologist last year, rather presciently in the middle of a global pandemic. It was a four-year degree and by the end of it I felt like an immunologist-by-proxy.

Now he works in a Covid-19 testing lab. Sometimes he swabs himself for laughs.

My son understands the brain-aching science behind it all, but he also acknowledges the public reluctance: yes, the vaccine is new, it’s on the forefront of the most amazing technology, he says, so it’s unsurprising if people are wary.

He (and me, riding his lab coat-tails) hear concerns about insufficient time to properly test the vaccine, and nonsense about abortion links, and the unfounded fears about messing with DNA.

And yes, very occasionally people have an adverse reaction to a vaccine – any vaccine – and sometimes they even die, yet that number is not even a tiny fraction of those who, thanks to immunisation, live long lives untouched by polio, safe from tetanus, unblighted by smallpox, yellow fever, diphtheria, hepatitis, rotavirus, rubella etc.

I’m not here to argue with rabid anti-vaxxers (there is a vaccine for rabies!). The facts are there – not on Facebook – but a rumour is halfway around the world before the truth even has its boots on.

Yet why kick back now? Every day we load our bodies with stuff guaranteed unhealthy, with known carcinogens, with products containing chemicals both untried and untested, with nicotine, alcohol, sugar, fats, unregulated “health” supplements, fragrance, even life-saving soap…

It’s 2021. I am bored sick of Covid-19.

So I’ve got my sleeve rolled up and I’m standing in the queue – right behind the essential workers, the old folk, and my son – because the only way back to a better life is forwards, with vaccine compliance.