What I learnt as an Oxford vaccine guinea pig

Was the Oxford vaccine trial paused? Mine wasn’t. I signed up for it last week, in the 55 to 69-year-old category, and I was told on Friday that I should continue posting my swabs and attending follow-up appointments. 

My friends were keen to tell me I was ‘utterly mad’ to join a trial. But I believe in vaccines. So do most anti-vaxxers, incidentally. It would be a rare adult who hadn’t benefited from childhood inoculations against polio, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough. My parents, who were raised in the 1930s, didn’t just believe in vaccines they rejoiced in them. When they were little it was all too common for a family to lose a child en route to adulthood. Two of my mother’s brothers died of diseases which are now preventable. During the 1960s, my siblings and I succumbed to mumps, tonsillitis, measles, (and its variant, German measles), before vaccines had been developed.