Know your vaccine etiquette
Dos and don’ts when you get your injection
When people look back and reflect on these peculiar days they’ll probably remember it in phases. The shock and adrenalin phase. The surprisingly sunny and boozy lockdown. The months of normalish. The months of tiers. The cancelled Christmas. Lockdown Three (aka The Worst One) and then the one we’re entering now, the Vaccine Period. This could go on for months, it may become the annual norm. Either way it turns out we need a brand new set of etiquette rules to cover it.
If you thought the vaccine coming to a community centre near you was an undiluted cause for celebration you would be mistaken.
It’s more complicated than that and as of now all things vaccine-related have the potential to get you in hot water if not handled carefully. Leaving aside the issue of antivaxxers ( just can’t deal with that) here’s everything you need to know about Vaccinerelated Etiquette. Worth a peruse, though we say it ourselves.
♦ Don’t ask “Did you get the Oxford or Pfizer?” It’s all about Pfizer, now, so that’s a bit like saying “Has your room got a sea view like ours, or did you get the air conditioning unit?”
♦ Don’t be the person who Could Have. Don’t say “I Could Have done 300 vaccines in that time myself ”, because actually you couldn’t. There are protocols. And unless you are a volunteer, working around the clock, that careless talk may cause irritation.
♦ Avoid getting vaccine demob happy. Don’t say – to a nonagenarian after they’ve had their jab – “Only three weeks and then you’re practically covered!” They do not like that. They won’t like it even after the second jab, whenever that may be, because of the potential for Complacency Creep in the community at large. People who have had the first jab often think that other people, when they get their jab, are going to ruin it for everyone.
♦ Don’t be amazed at people not having yet been called for their jab. What help is that… it’s coming.
♦ Do wear loose-sleeved clothing, suitable for rolling up to receive your vaccine, unless you have a very manly chest (see Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis) and are deliberately making getting vaccinated look effortless and cool and like a thing real men do first.
♦ Do post a Vaxxie, to encourage others. However, using your vaccine appointment as an opportunity for self-publicity is on a par with posting pictures of fit doctors in A&E. Bad form. (We are not looking forward to Madonna’s vaccination outfit which will probably be an old Gaultier pointy bra, big pants and a jewelled eye patch.)
♦ Don’t confuse yourself with a scientist and/or someone high up in the BMA. To be clear it’s not that we mind being vaccines-plained – go ahead, there’s nothing else to talk about. What we take exception to is the solemn, expert-dealing-with-civilians delivery. You’re not an expert, remember? You just read something.
♦ Don’t start overusing the term “rollout”. Rollout is this year’s “social distancing”. And don’t use the word antibodies unless you are absolutely sure what it means, ditto immunity and T cells. Drives everyone up the wall.
♦ Don’t be an “Our Vaccine Experience” bore. It is certainly tempting to tell everyone how smoothly it all went and how courteous and kind the staff were and how, though you might not have had the Salisbury cathedral organist taking requests, you had a radio belting out YMCA. This would have qualified as an interesting anecdote back in the first week of January, not so much now.
♦ Don’t turn your vaccine day into a social media event or even, down the line, a cause for face-to-face celebration. When the rules are eased, this could happen. The “Vaxxed Now I’m Back” brunch, the Vaxxie Beast themed party. Let’s not go there.
♦ Do say “When you’ve had the first one just pretend you haven’t, because you might as well not have”. That just about covers it.
Asking if they’ve had the Pfizer is a bit like saying ‘Has your room got a sea view like ours?’