IT was probably inevitable that vaccinations would become the focus of the latest Covid stushie.
Most sane people want one ASAP and most politicians are at pains to talk up their efforts to get them into arms ASAP.
A few observations though. It’s clear from all the medical, epidemiological stuff coming through, that mutations of the original virus are not only present over half the globe – including the UK – but likely to increase.
Which vaccines are still potent with which variants seems to me a whole lot more important than statistics, most especially manipulated ones.
Secondly, it’s horribly disappointing that all the fine rhetoric about equitable distribution of supplies worldwide seems to have come apart the instant the vaccines actually came on stream.
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Once again, it seems the governments with the deepest pockets will win out over some countries which already have minimal health care. That’s not just morally repugnant, but utterly perverse. As the current cliché has it – nobody’s safe till everybody’s safe.
That’s especially true when the attitudes to travellers’ quarantine arrangements are so variable.
The countries where sports fans are back in stadia, and children and students back at their desks, are those where anyone flying in from anywhere was put in a hotel until the presumed danger period was over. No exceptions.
Just hoping that folks will do as they promise at the airport won’t cut it.
And never underestimate the ingenuity of the scammers, for whom any crisis is merely another opportunity to defraud society.
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We learned this week that as well as providing fake travel documents, the criminal classes were now perfecting fraudulent certificates “proving” that the traveller had tested negative immediately before boarding.
It takes a specially warped mind to think that it’s OK to risk the health of nations in order to make yourself a faster, illegal buck.
Meanwhile, back at the media ranch, some of my colleagues got their undergarments in a fankle worrying about invitations to vaccinations not being in the promised blue envelopes.
Trust me on this, sunbeams: people wanting vaccinated are perfectly happy to be invited on the back of a lottery ticket if necessary.
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