Well, I had my first jab on Thursday. I got myself officially registered as a carer (I don’t understand why I already wasn’t), and booked immediately.
It didn’t hurt, though I have to say it was the most uncomfortable jab I can remember having. Mind you, that might have been just a throw of the dice as to where the needle went in. No side-effects until about 15 hours later, when I ached a bit for about six hours. After that, no signs at all – not even an aching arm.
For any of the nutjobs out there, I don’t send the TV funny when I walk past it, nor do I attempt to phone home when I’m near a Wi-Fi hub. And as far as I can ascertain, my mind is not being controlled remotely by anyone.
The only minor downside (to me, at any rate) is that I had the AstraZeneca vaccine. If allowed to choose, I’d have preferred the Pfizer/BioNTech one. Why? Because of the nutjobs.
You see, no vaccine is ever 100% effective. That means that every time you go out, if you are ‘challenged’ by someone carrying the virus, there’s a 20% chance you’ll catch it. It’s not quite that simple, but it’ll do for this discussion. The problem then is the number of times you are ‘challenged’ – and the more non-vaccinated people there are, the greater the number of challenges. It’s like saving a penalty in football – if you only get called on to try once, you might save it. But if you have to save 100 penalties, the likelihood of letting one in increases. And the nutjobs out there are the penalty-takers, so the more of them there are, the greater your chance of letting one in.
Having said that, there is mounting evidence that having been vaccinated also reduces the chances of you becoming seriously ill if you do catch COVID, so you could say it’s like having two goalkeepers trying to save the penalty.
The AstraZeneca jab is less effective than the Pfizer one according to the clinical trials, hence my preference.