Jab(ba) Day

 

If you want some sort of proof that the universe is in fact a sitcom, running as a gigantic simulation devised by someone with a slightly sick and dark sense of humour, then look no further than the fact that the call for me to go and get my dose of the COVID-19 vaccine arrived at my mobile phone while I was about as far away from that phone as I could possibly be. 

Thankfully the NHS have managed the vaccine roll-out in a super-efficient manner (and I do stress "The NHS" here, for god's sake do not give our useless government any credit at all for it - it is not their doing but they will undoubtedly take all the credit for it). The call was thankfully followed up by a voicemail message giving me a number to phone to get booked in. 

So as I type I've got about an hour and 3/4 to go before I'm once again needled. 

I used to hate injections. Over the course of the last year though, if I mentally tot up how many times I've had a needle in my arm, or a canula, or a nasty blood-test thumb-prick, I'd guess at around 50 times (blood sugar tests every hour on the hour, even through the night are so much fun, don't you think said no one ever). 

By comparison, having the COVID jab will be nothing - though if you believe our wonderful press and media, all manner of befoulments will befall you once you've had the dose. Blood clots, shortness of breath, flu-like symptoms, feeling rotten for ages afterwards. Like everything amazing humans are able to achieve, the AstraZenica vaccine is now being knocked left right and centre by the sort of folk who have spent the entirety of the pandemic blissfully ignoring all the rules laid out to protect us all, and are now shitting on the one thing that speeds us back to something approaching normality. There's no comedy in this, no irony, just anger and resentment that these people exist in their pig-swill ignorance. 

I took my wife in for her jab a week ago, and while there I saw someone being turned away for not wearing a mask. I felt anger at first, then pity - not for the person but for anyone who ever has to deal with that person in their lives, as an employer, employee, spouse, father (of course it was a man), brother - any form of interaction with this person must be absolutely hateful, particularly for the security person who had to use nothing but strong words to get the guy to leave (which he did, swearing to all and sundry as he went, spitting on the ground to show his contempt, and sadly not walking straight under a bus as would be the universe simulation's ultimate act of karma if it ran correctly and I'd programmed it!)

I'm going in, I will have a mask on, I will wear a short-sleeved shirt, I will be dosed, I will sit in the waiting area for 5 mins as directed, I will indeed do as I'm told because I trust the health care professionals tasked with treating me as I always have. I won't complain about the after-effects because I know what the alternative would be like and I'm under no illusion that a few side effects are neither here nor there compared to contracting a virus that half the stupid population of this country are still convinced doesn't exist. 

The NHS has done so much for me over the past year and continues to do so (I've got an ultrasound next week to try and figure out why a non-drinking non-smoking vegetarian who leads a healthy lifestyle has a completely fecked Liver). But some people just don't deserve it.