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On my way to receive the #COVID vaccine. A lot of people have asked me how I chose between the various available vaccines when booking, so here is a short thread explaining my thinking
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It's important to remember the context. We are in the middle of an emergency. There is a pandemic with huge numbers of people dying, others left disabled and in need of rehabilitation. Still more have had lives shattered by bereavement. Strong public health measures are needed
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It is phenomenal that expert researchers have developed #COVID vaccines and evaluated their safety and efficacy in such a short time. It is phenomenal that they are being manufactured and administered at massive scale. This process is fast-moving and the situation shifts
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The safety for all #COVID vaccines is similar. There is a huge amount of disinformation. You are not going to be microchipped. You won't grow a tail. There is no evidence of effect on fertility. All medicines have a risk of rare allergies and this is monitored appropriately
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What about comparative efficacy? It's important to consider vaccines as a public health intervention. Preventing individuals from getting a disease is important, but given that we can't achieve 100% coverage and 100% efficacy, what's really important is preventing transmission
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Mass vaccination is another public health intervention to prevent transmission - like lockdowns, face coverings, hand-washing, social distancing, testing, isolation of cases and contact-tracing. We need to use them all together if we want to stop coronavirus transmission
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So the priority is vaccinating as many people as possible, as soon as possible. A high population coverage is what's important. This is /actually/ what herd immunity means - the majority vaccinated and so breaking transmission - and it's unfortunate that the term was so misused
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As I said it's phenomenal that we have a mass roll out of vaccination. It's inevitable and foreseeable that there will be an element of chaos to this, such as fluctuation in the supply of different vaccines, surplus being available at short notice, changes to what's available
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So how did I choose? I booked the first available appointment. While my own protection and immunity is important to me, what's equally important is contributing to large scale public health measures. I won't have 100% protection so will still need PPE at work & safety measures
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So of course you must give informed consent, you must understand the benefits and any potential adverse effects. But we are in the middle of an impressive, large-scale, and sometimes shifting mass vaccination programme. It's important to take the opportunity that's available
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Best wishes to everyone, it's been a rotten year in all sorts of ways and I really hope there's a way forward. I hope you all get a #COVID19 vaccine offered as soon as possible
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