Needle-ss Bureaucracy

On Tuesday, it will be 12 weeks since I had my first COVID jab.  I wrote at that time about my concern at having the A-V vaccine, even before all the other information about blood clots was made public, whilst not being offered any alternative, about my concerns for the measures at the surgery to ensure non-contact with others who might be carriers and son on.  I also wrote, having had the jab about my concern at the extent of those measures, not to mention nearly being run over waiting in the queue on the GP's car park!  Well, with two days to go, I am still waiting to be asked to go for my second jab.

Despite the fact that me and my wife had our first jabs at the same time, she had notification for her second jab a more than a fortnight ago, and had her second jab more than a week ago.  After she received her notification, puzzled, I contacted the GP.  Unless you have a day to waste waiting for someone to answer the phone, ringing is not an option, so I sent an e-mail.  There was no reply.  I don't have a mobile phone, so my wife, who does, sent them a text message on my behalf, and a couple of days later, someone from the surgery rang me.

There was nothing odd about us not getting an appointment on the same day I was told, and I wasn't due until the twelve weeks was up.  At that point 10 and a half weeks were already up, and my wife was due to get her second jab the next day.  Given that I am older and have asthma, you might have thought that if either of us would get an earlier appointment it would have been me.  Not to worry I was told, the notification would come in the week prior to when I was due to get the jab, and they promised me they had, in any case, informed the staff making the appointments.

Well, less than two days to go, and still no notification to go and get the jab, that the government is telling everyone it is vital for us to get.  I even tried going on to the government website to book a second jab directly, but it just came back and said it could not book me one, because I could do it until after 6th May!  Yet, my son, was able to book his second jab that way, although its not due until some time in June.  This is in stark contrast to the fact, that, as I also reported a while ago, for a month after we had had our first jabs, we kept getting communications from the NHS telling us to get our first jabs!

The government is being praised for its success in the vaccine roll-out programme, but from what I have seen it is marked by the same degree of bureaucracy and incompetence that the rest of its strategy has witnessed.  Its just being hidden by the large-scale of the number of people being vaccinated.