Why I prefer to rely on natural immunity

‘Did you hear it?’ said a friend of mine, red-faced with the flush of a piece of news she couldn’t wait to offload, as she rushed into a church hall where we were attending an event.

She was bursting with excitement because a mutual acquaintance had just been on a radio phone-in show banging the drum for the vaccine. I confessed I had not heard it, because I had no idea she was planning to go on. But it didn’t surprise me because this lady has had a go at me for being ‘one of those anti-vaxxers’ because I won’t have the jab — mainly because I’ve recovered from Covid.

She apparently made quite an impression on the radio. She took the programme by storm, asserting that everyone should have the vaccine because her husband nearly died of Covid despite being previously healthy.

‘What a cheek!’ was my instinctive comment, because that was not what my friend told me at the time. She rang me back then and told me the doctors had warned her that her husband’s kidneys were in bad shape which was why he was struggling to clear the virus.

It’s not as cold and inhospitable in the land of conspiracy theories as it used to be

When they discharged him they told him to change his lifestyle. She told me repeatedly in the months following his release from hospital that he was a new man because the whole experience had been a wake-up call.

But a year later, she’s on a radio phone-in publicly condemning those who don’t want the vaccine on the basis that if her husband can get it and nearly die, then anyone can.