About a year ago I was planning a long-haul trip. I looked
the country up on the fitfortravel.nhs.uk website to see what diseases were
present there and which vaccinations were recommended. I booked an appointment at
Boots and went to get the injections. I didn’t look up any of the vaccines on
the Internet. I simply trusted that an NHS website would have sensible information
and that any vaccines recommended would be safe.
Over the years like everyone else I have gone to the
doctor. The doctor has sometimes given me advice about treatment and about
medicines I should take. I have never once searched the Internet about these medicines,
nor have I searched for other opinions about my treatment. I have not
questioned if the doctor knows what he is talking about. I have not tried to find
websites that undermine his opinion.
From time to time my doctor has recommended that I
take a vaccine. I routinely have a vaccine for flu. I turn up every year get a
jab sit down for five minutes and go home. I never research whether this year’s
vaccine is safe or effective, or whether it would be better if I was vaccinated
against a different strain of flu. I just accept what I am given and don’t
think about it further.
Life is about trust and assessing risks in a
reasonable way. When I get in a bus, I trust that the driver knows how to drive
and isn’t drunk. When I get in a car, I trust that other car drivers will drive
reasonably competently. When I fly in a plane, I trust that it has been
repaired correctly, that the pilot knows how to fly and that the science of aeroplanes
is accurate and that a combination of wings and jet engines will keep the plane
from crashing.
We cannot know everything. No matter how educated a
person is there are times when we have to trust that someone else knows better.
If I know the science of planes and engines, I probably won’t know how vaccines
work. If I know how vaccines work, I probably won’t understand suspension
bridges or how buildings are constructed safely. If we didn’t trust that other people
knew more than we do we wouldn’t use any of the products that are tested for safety
routinely each year, nor would we dare do anything that depends on a knowledge
that we lack.
I began reading about Covid last January and read a
lot, because I had to weigh up the risks of travel and ultimately, I was unable
to travel abroad because of Covid. The information about this new illness has
been very divergent, and knowledge has changed rapidly.
I was mildly sceptical about lockdown from the
beginning, because I thought in the long run it would kill more than it saved.
I still think that, but it may take years to prove it. But despite my mild
scepticism I always did what the public health authorities suggested. I have as
far as I am aware broken no lockdown rules.
Public health is one of the great triumphs of modern times.
It is the difference between 19th century squalor and disease in Britain with
much lower life expectancy and the world we live in today. It is the difference
between third world countries where we need special vaccinations to visit and
Britain where we get a few vaccinations as children and teenagers and then can
expect to live safely. Public health depends on the vast majority of people
following certain rules and doing what they are told. If you don’t like that, then
you might as well propose getting into a time machine so that you can live in
Dickensian London.
2020 is the closest any of us have come to living through
a war. It has cost the public finances the sort of amount that we would
normally only spend in wartime. It has cost huge numbers of people their jobs
and will cost more. There have been curtailments on freedom and restrictions
that none of us would have thought possible a year ago.
It may be possible to argue that some of these
restrictions were unnecessary. I think it is reasonable to suggest that if we
had done nothing from March onwards but wash our hands more, then in the long
run more lives would have been saved. But this was never a political option
given that all Western countries including in the end even Sweden have behaved
similarly. The media would have crucified any lockdown sceptic politician in the
face of mounting Covid deaths, even if it had been true that doing nothing
would ultimately save lives overall.
In the absence of a vaccine Covid would probably have
followed the pattern of previous epidemics. In time as more and more people
were infected it would have become milder and eventually, we would not have
noticed it. But who knows how long it would have been before we could have got
back to how things were a year ago? The cost to our economy that is already catastrophic
would continually have got worse.
We are exceptionally fortunate that through the brilliance
of modern science a number of vaccines have been discovered. Governments around
the world have thrown the kitchen sink at this.
Britain is particularly fortunate because we will
receive the vaccine more quickly than anyone else. This means that we will get
back to normal more quickly. The damage to our economy will be less.
The vaccines that have been developed have been tested
by scientists. None of the people who have received them during the testing
have become seriously ill. No serious scientist has written a scientific paper
that has even suggested that any of the Covid vaccines is unsafe. No one has
pointed out a real danger from taking one of them and published it in a serious
scientific journal.
I am not much at risk from Covid, but I live with my 87-year-old
mother and she is seriously at risk. If I caught Covid it would be very
difficult for me to avoid infecting her. I will therefore take the vaccine as
quickly as possible and at the first opportunity as will my mother. The issue
is not whether you are at risk, but whether you can pass on Covid to others.
Vaccines work on individuals, but more importantly they
work on the group. So long as the vast majority of children are given a measles
vaccine it is unlikely that there will be a measles outbreak. But when the percentage
of those children being given the vaccine falls below 95% an outbreak becomes more
and more likely.
The anti-MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine
campaign which falsely linked the MMR vaccine with autism led to fewer parents
vaccinating their children, which caused more measles outbreaks in Britain.
Measles had been eradicated in Britain but is now killing children. All because
of a charlatan who was anti-vaccines.
Most of us are not much at risk of Covid. The chances
of me dying are very small. The biggest risk to most of us is economic. Our
standard of living and our job prospects are being continually damaged by the continuation
of the pandemic. This will have a real outcome on health. Recession and loss of
jobs kills people. Less money spent on health care kills people.
There is only one thing that can prevent us getting
back to normal. That one thing is if not enough people choose to be vaccinated
against Covid. If nearly everyone in Britain gets vaccinated when given the chance,
it will be very hard to find anyone with Covid who can infect anyone else. If not,
enough people get vaccinated, we will potentially have a situation like with
Measles.
The vaccine has been developed quickly, but thousands
of people have already received it. No one has died or become seriously ill.
What’s the worst that could happen to you then? Not much. You might have a
fever and feel like you had a hangover. The risk to you is tiny. Far less than
the risk of Covid and also far less than the risk of letting the economy go further
into recession.
I believe the British Government and its scientific
advisors have been doing their best. They may have made mistakes. I may not
have agreed with every decision. But I
still trust that these people want what is best for Britain. I still trust that
the scientists who have discovered the vaccine are honest and genuinely want to
end the Covid pandemic. There is no serious evidence to suggest anything else.
If you don’t trust the scientists who discovered the
vaccine, why do you truth any other scientists? But in that case, you would as
well reject the whole of the modern world. We have to trust scientists and doctors,
or we simply cannot function. So too now. I am quite sure the vaccine is safe
and advice everyone to take it.
