@Ladybeard2. Having had Covid a few weeks ago, I would urge you to rethink. My partner and I both had what our GP later described as ‘moderate to severe’ symptoms and although we avoided hospitalisation, the experience was truly awful and not one I would ever want to repeat.
Covid is not just flu like symptoms, although that’s how it starts off. We are both early sixties and our symptoms amongst others, included a horrible, raw, measles like rash all over arms and upper torso, a cough that takes your breath away - coughing fits which come in waves before you’ve got your breath back from the last lot. There was constant nausea, diarrhoea and dreadful muscle aches. We both also had constant, drenching night sweats because of the high temperature. Then there’s the fear that goes with it, because the symptoms gradually get worse over about seven to ten days and you don’t know how bad they will get.
Now, a few weeks later, we are both still left with significant symptoms - including horrible body aches in which you feel really heavy, nausea, breathing difficulties and we both have secondary chest infections requiring antibiotics. We also have exhaustion, the like of which I have never felt before - everything is an effort and the smallest task leaves you tired and wheezing. Even the way I breathe seems different - the air doesn’t seem to reach my lungs the same, and we are both beginning to feel the mental health effects - depression and anxiety about the future and how to cope with the debilitating after effects. We are both CEV and were shielding for 12 months. We were really careful - no one came in or out, shopping was done on the internet, sprayed and left in the porch after delivery and we took lots of precautions. I thought we were safe. Then my partner had to go into hospital for surgery. On admission he tested positive on a lateral flow test. This turned out to be a false positive as two follow up PCR tests confirmed, but by then it was too late as he had been placed on a Covid ward and exposed to the virus.
I’m sorry to go on, and I really didn’t intend to relate our whole experience here, but no matter how careful you are, and despite the best practice in prevention, sometimes circumstances take these things out of your control I really believe that vaccination is the only way we can combat it and I would urge everyone to think twice before refusing. Without vaccination, we would be living in a world where smallpox, polio, measles etc., would be commonplace. Thankfully, these awful diseases have mostly been consigned to the past. I really don’t understand those who don’t want to do the same to Covid.