Got myself injected

Having managed to dodge the coronavirus for the best part of a year, despite working in some relatively high-risk areas, last week I stood in line and received my first dose of vaccine. If the outcome data is as good as has been reported (and there’s no reason to believe that it isn’t) it’s looking like I have a reasonably good chance of coming out of this pandemic essentially unscathed, physically at least.

The jab I got was the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b2, described in the product literature as “highly purified single-stranded, 5’-capped messenger RNA (mRNA) produced by cell-free in vitro transcription from the corresponding DNA templates, encoding the viral spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV-2”. The fact that our species is capable of even imagining such a thing, let alone developing and manufacturing it on an industrial scale in little over twelve months since the virus emerged, does give one some hope for the future of humanity.

Of course the mere existence of this vaccine, and the others that have become available over the last couple of months, would count for little without a reliable distribution system, but, happily, our local inoculation programme seems to be rolling out reasonably efficiently. Less happily, production problems have reportedly resulted in a shortage of supply in the rest of the EU, indirectly straining the Brexit trade deal barely a month after it was signed. I guess the last year should have taught me that, for every piece of encouraging news there is bound to be an equally dispiriting counterpoint.