Called Up

Today, 30th January 2021, one year after the first person in the U.K. died of COVID-19, I received notification that a vaccine is on its way, and I should be receiving a call from my doctor within fourteen days, to go get jabbed. I can't wait. I'm fully aware of the contoversy surrounding the vaccine, and am by no means going to try to persuade anyone to do what doesn't come naturally to them, but here's why I'm getting in line with my sleeve rolled up. 

 I am seventy years old, and I remember the time before vaccines were routine. I remember the harrowing black and white photographs of children in iron lungs, and the depressing death tolls that resulted from recurrent polio epidemics. 

 My first friend was GarySalisbury, the boy next door. We were five and six years old, and were inseparable. That is until the day when my mother told me that Gary couldn't come  out to play, because he was poorly. Then he was in hospital, then he wouldn't be coming home at all, because he had died. 

I remember the last time we played together, in a stream behind the row of shops at the bottom of our road. That's where he contracted polio, and I didn't. 

 I remember the emergency vaccination  clinic set up at the Community Centre. 

I remember the sugar cube that meant my mother would never have to suffer the loss her friend Agnes had. 

 So yes, I'm not allowing myself the luxury of denial. I'm staying home until the epidemic  has subsided, as it surely will: quickly, if 70%+ of us get vaccinated before the virus mutates, or slowly if we don't.

Please don’t let a future cohort of seventy-year olds remember for the young, that COVID-19 killed a quarter of a million British people, because the lessons of their elders had been ignored. 

Death toll to date: 107,807