Booster Take-up

Its reported that the take-up of the third booster jab for COVID is not going so well.  To put that in perspective, its still above 60%, and has really only just got underway.  I'd suggest several reasons why its not been so good as for the first two jabs.

Firstly, there seems to be some problems in the administration.  That isn't new.  It happened with the second jabs too.  Despite my wife and I having our first jabs at the exact same time and place, I only got my second jab three weeks after she did, and only after some persistence in demanding it.  That means that although she has had her booster jab, I now still have another couple of weeks to wait for my booster.  Then there is confusion about whether you need to wait 6 months, or only five months.

Secondly, it is clashing with the annual flu jabs.  We got our flu jabs a month ago, so we had no problem on that account, but my sister and her husband had their flu jab and COVID jab on the same day, and were both laid low after it, and there seems to be a number of reports of that being the case.  Many will probably, then, try to separate out the two, getting the flu jab a week or so before having the booster.

Thirdly, over the last few weeks, we have seen another campaign to try have lockdowns and lockouts reinstated, or other restrictions applied.  As I wrote a while ago, the inevitable consequence of that is to undermine confidence in the vaccination programme itself.  Either vaccines work or they don't.  If they work, then there is no need for anyone fully vaccinated to have any further restrictions placed upon them, no need for vaccine passports or any other such restrictions.  On the other hand, if we are being told that all these restrictions are required, then that can only mean that those advocating them have no confidence in the efficacy of the vaccines themselves, in which case, why would anyone else?  Why would anyone risk any other complications from being jabbed, if the jab's effectiveness itself is being questioned?

The reality, is of course, that the vaccinations are effective.  For most people being double jabbed provides adequate protection.  Its only for the elderly, or those whose immune system is otherwise compromised that even a booster jab is required.  But, in continuing to argue for lockdowns and other restrictions, those that have been doing so undermine vaccination itself.  That some of those doing that have been amongst the scientists advising the government, is particularly alarming, because for the average person in the street, their claims that further restrictions are required can only be understood to mean they really do not have faith in the vaccination programme itself.

Of course, those that have been arguing for continued or renewed lockdowns and other restraints have largely done so for their own specific reasons.  On the one hand, there are all those catastrophists of various stripes for whom the lockdowns and lockouts have played into their wildest fantasies of bringing capitalism to a halt, and, in their fevered imaginations, thereby, hastening its demise opening up the door to their own particular replacement from either the Right or Left.  For various opportunists, such as those within the Labour Party, its not any collapse of capitalism they desire, but merely as much damage to the incumbent government, that they can utilise in their verbal opposition to it.  Of course, these various reasons can be found amongst people in other walks of life, in trades unions, as well as amongst the scientific community itself.  Scientists are also people with agendas, after all.