I have an idea about the coming COVID-19 vaccines. Why not prioritise their distribution to those who believe they are safe? I’d better explain.
There’s a new yougov poll out which asked Brits how confident they were about the confidence of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Here are the results of the British jury:
Very 28%
Somewhat. 40%
Not very. 14%
Not at all. 9%
Now I am not an epidemiologist, nor a virologist. But I believe what medical experts and scientists tell me. I do not understand COVID-19’s genomic sequence, nor do I really understand what a genomic sequence is. Yet, not only did Chinese scientists work it out, they did so within 48 hours.
It’s the same with most forms of medicine. I don’t even understand how paracetamol works, except that it does. How on earth does it know which bit of me hurts? I don’t understand how my antidepressants make me feel less depressed. I just know they do. I don’t know how chemotherapy works, either, but if I had cancer, the last thing I would worry about would be whether it was safe. I’d listen to the doctor.
As I have said before, the main reason people are sceptical about vaccines is fear. It is hard to take in the fact that science worked the genomic sequence in two days and produced a vaccine within months. And that’s why a staggering 63% of the population is at. the very least somewhat lacking in confidence to having none at all. (By the way, if you add the 28% who have high levels of confidence, you’ve asked 101% of the public. Impressive, eh?)
I am a generous man so here’s what I’ll do. Find out the good folk who are not as confident as the 28% and ask them to step aside while we have it. I’m happy to step up the order, have the vaccine and start going back to the pub, gigs and, best of all, foreign holidays. I’ll send the 63% a postcard they can share with each other whilst I sink into my sun bed, with a good book in one hand and a cold beer in the other. I’ll do it as a public service and when I get home and they see that the vaccine hasn’t killed me, they can plan their holidays for 2022.
It’s normal to be wary and in this case scared. We’ve never had a virus like this in modern times so we’ve never needed a vaccine for one. But most of us have taken vaccines for other stuff and we know that vaccines are safe. We can leave the crazies to it and allow David Icke and Piers Corbyn to talk bollocks to an audience that doesn’t believe the truth. And if people still refuse the vaccine, it will be their problem, not mine.
