Unease at privilege ….

[ToomuchHeat]

Does anyone feel like me? I’ve had two AZ and because I’ve come under CEV category I’ll be due a booster soon. But I’m sure I will have antibodies I know I should probably do a test to see if I have. But I feel embarrassingly privileged and just very guilty that worldwide we are not vaccinating enough people and here I am about to get my third.

I did think what if I didn’t take it but what sort of protest is that? I could be risking my life and I have young kids.

I am just so frustrated by inequality - I know it’s everywhere even in this country - it’s quite a sweeping statement and I don’t want to get into western privilege etc but I feel we are just focussing on our little island.

A friend of mine works in engineering and looks at technology to combat climate change - he doesn’t hold out much hope for the future and often in a light humoured way highlights that our kids are probably going to be at war because of climate change (referencing extreme weather conditions and migration). This has nothing to do with the vaccine but think I’m just in a doom and gloom place and really wish I could think otherwise.

Good grief!

Yes …

Twice.

These things do hurt one’s head. I was thinking about vaccine inequality yesterday - one issue is that if everyone else in your (national) community receives a certain level of protection, and you don’t, then you’re the person the virus will find.

But experts are laughing at our proposed solution of not making sharing vaccines internationally a priority, while at the same time allowing unrestricted international travel.

(Also, this is MN: you’re not allowed to speculate on the dystopia into which we are hurling our children …)

Sorry didn’t realise not allowed to think of what our children’s future might be.

Today I was just thinking about if the boosters become a bi-annual thing. What could be the health risks of this?

Agree it’s better to be vaccinated than not - I have a few friends double vaccinated who are so glad as they have covid and not well.

I’m not going to single handedly help to vaccinate the world but vaccine inequality is preventing covid from disappearing

Well if it helps you feel any better I was talking to a relative in Kenya, and from her perspective WE are one of the worst-affected countries in the world so we need the jabs much more than they do, their case numbers have been very very low all the way through without any vaccinations. She was like - why should we take your jabs away, we're a) not spreading it, b) not dying from it and c) not travelling - you lot on plague island are the ones that need vaccinating to protect the rest of the world It certainly was a thought provoking conversation, that's for sure!

I think that would be a reasonable position if you were young, healthy and recently double Pfizered. As you are CEV and less recently double AZ (not that I’m bashing AZ, it’s still an excellent vaccine) you seem to me to fall into a category of people who need extra protection. I don’t see why you should feel guilty about following medical advice. Vaccine inequality wouldn’t change if we didn’t boost a few million people- we are billions short on vaccines globally.

I’m not even sure why the world is so obsessed with vaccine inequality - I suspect “access to clean water equality”, “malaria inequality”, “maternal mortality equality” etc are cheaper and easier to improve and probably of greater relevance to many poorer countries but not sexy, in the news and a focus of attention. And of course there isn’t the whole vested interest “breeding ground for variants” issue…

I too am CEV.
I do no see my immunosuppression as privileged. My chances of surviving Covid unvaccinated are extremely limited.
Disability for me can never equal privilege.

I am over the moon to be getting a booster as I hope to live to see my children become adults.
I find your post to be the exact opposite of how I feel.

Sorry didn’t realise not allowed to think of what our children’s future might be.

You need to be listening to this morning’s Woman’s Hour! (Radio 4.)

vaccine inequality is preventing covid from disappearing

New variants emerge where there are high case rates...and if you look at the places with some of the highest cases per 100,000 in the last week - Slovenia, Israel, Gibraltar, the UK, the USA... these are not the places we would be sending your booster vaccination to anyway as they have enough of their own.

If we had your booster vaccination right now, where would it be better used towards to try and suppress new variants - a country with 11,000 cases per hundred thousand people (the UK, the USA, the Netherlands, Sweden), or a country with 100 cases (Nigeria, Sierra Leone, DR Congo)? I mean, it's better to share our vaccines than let them go out of date, for sure, but I would argue you getting your booster does more to prevent variants and reduce the global pandemic than sending that booster jab to Liberia/Burundi/Sudan under Covax.

@621CustardCream438 I can't agree with you more. There are so many inequalities we could and should be working on - just getting girls into school solves a lot of problems later on down the line and we can't even manage that in many places. (If anyone wants to know about a good kitchen-table charity that works on this, I'm a trustee of one, PM me for details!!)