Into the snow

I went down to the local vaccine centre to see if I could persuade someone to give me my booster three weeks early. Sadly not, although it was hardly surprising. But I gave it a go at least.

The Omicron news is dreadful in terms of speed of spread and vaccine escape, at least in terms of non-severe illness. The jury is still out on the mildness or not of the variant but the modelling looks brutal with a possible rapid increase in hospitalisations.

With my waning Astra vaccine and its maybe, if I’m lucky, 10% antibody effectiveness against Omicron it feels to come to the UK now would be like walking out into a storm with just ten per cent of my clothes on.

It’s sad and involves cancelling flights, car hire, parking and letting people down and it’s hard not to internalise ‘the situation’ as my personal failing - for not conjuring a booster jab out of thin air, or for not being ‘courageous’ or debonair.

I don’t know if Italy will be more prepared for Omicron when it starts to take off here, as it surely will. I think it probably will be but we’ll have to see if that makes a difference

They told me to come back to the vaccine centre on New Year’s Eve to see what they could do for me.

It’s a funny sort of race, innit?