The danger of categorising those who don’t want to be vaccinated now as ‘anti-vaxxers’ is that you lump together those who are against vaccination on principle and those who are in favour of vaccination but who don’t want to be early adopters of which ever vaccines the NHS chooses to use. I’d count myself in the latter category, but I’m not an anti-vaxxer.
There are, as I understand it currently six potential vaccines that the U.K. has ordered, with varying levels of efficacy and limited understanding of the side effects. That’s one of the reasons why the manufacturers have excluded all liability from future health claims as part of their supply agreements. And I have no confidence in government, any government, providing support if it’s needed. Against that, at the moment I have a 99% (PHE) chance of not catching it, and a 99.5% (ONS) of not dying if I do catch it. So while I fully understand the need from a community protection perspective hopefully you’ll excuse me if I’m not at the front of the queue. If the numbers change then obviously I’ll reassess. But for now I’ll wait a while to see which vaccine has the best results. And even then we won’t be clear on the side effects!
It’s probably academic as I won’t be anywhere near the priority list to be vaccinated for a while, and if it’s necessary to prove vaccination for travel, well, I’m sure I can delay travelling to those locations or reassess my position at that point. My educated guess is that in 12 months we’ll be much cleared about which vaccines are most effective, and indeed may well have developed some better ones, so 2022 works for me :)
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