Today
In strange times it can be hard to avoid behaving strangely. What does this time require of us? Can we trust those whom we have entrusted to lead us? There has been so much shameless lying by world leaders in recent years; why should we believe anything they say?
This year has been the year of COVID-19. As a world we are now no longer content to lift up our hands and shrug when someone dies. Even people who are near death anyway are treated as though every minute of their lives is precious.
The idea of dying from infectious disease is so foreign to our thoughts in the developed world that we flail about, turning to one answer or another. And the science is so complex that one can't be surprised that people turn to simple explanations and instant solutions.
At the front of this is many people's fear of the vaccinations that are now being rolled out. The science, whether it's the RNA-based (What is RNA, I hear you ask) ones or those produced more traditionally, is beyond many people so fear triumphs again. It's much easier to believe it's all a plot (although with what purpose seems unclear) than to try to get your head around how a jab with a tiny strand of COVID RNA isn't going to give you the disease.
In My Day
I don't remember my first vaccination . I was certainly a baby when I was given my smallpox vaccination. Some sort of protection from Smallpox has been around for about four hundred years, usually involving treatment with dead infected tissue. Most people of my age have a slightly pitted oval scar on their upper arm as evidence. This programme of vaccination was so absolute and successful that smallpox does not now exist in the population.
Next came polio. This was mainly a disease of childhood, causing death and muscle wastage among other things. Daddy invented the "polio-wash" and insisted that we washed our hands whenever we came home after being on public transport.
I don't think anybody objected on grounds of personal freedom, or declared that it was all a plot to render men sterile (which is one thing that delayed Polio going the way of smallpox until 2020).
At the age of twelve along came the BCG vaccination against TB. For this you first had to prove that you weren't carrying antibodies already, so there was a preliminary jab, followed up a few weeks later. Again, this was carried out in school and did leave a rather sore lump for a few days. Comparing our sore arms became a sort of badge of honour.
As a result of this these diseases more or less vanished from our lives. This was followed with the next generation, by jabs for measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria (more or less unheard of these days).
The point is that we have become so used to the benefits that these treatments conferred, with healthier, longer lives, that we have lost sight of how we came to be so healthy. People talk about freedom of choice. What about my freedom of choice not to want to live in a world where a disease that can be controlled is still mowing down millions of people?
