Jab-berwockying our way around the pandemic

There's a lot of jabbering going on about the various COVID vaccines, in the sense both of  jabber on all sides, and of feeling threatened by a Jabberwocky monster of a vaccine -- "Jabberwocky" as in Lewis Carroll's entertaining poem within his Through the Looking-Glass, 1871. For some folks, this Jab is a beast to avoid.

Some people don't trust vaccines, never get 'flu shots and don't intend to get a corona jab -- at which point some commentators accuse them of being mass murderers. What the accusers need to remember is that we have certain Constitutional rights in this country, such as the right to Security of the Person and the right to Freedom of Speech -- meaning freedom to discuss scientific information, opinions around health, and personal choices. 

Not all vaccines are equal in character, efficacy, or safety. The COVID ones were designed in a hurry. It is the job of media to convey information about them to the lay person who wishes to decide as an individual whether to receive what is really something of a shot in the dark. Disconcertingly, the magazine of one prominant seniors' organization has attacked other media outlets for presenting all aspects of the debate and the science.

The word "vaccine" comes from "vacca", cow, because the original smallpox vaccine came from bovine (cow) viruses, and subsequent disease vaccines kept the same name. Similarly, the word inoculate means to inject the bud (or "eye", hence "ocular") of a virus into the body of a patient. How surprising is it that some people are leery of this impregnation, this invasion by a separate body? A jabberwock-ic threat indeed, to those who value "security of the person". What could be more personal than other people putting things into your body? What, if you didn't invite it, more like an assault?

It's enough to make some folks "frumious" -- to quote Carroll again -- and pretty "mimsy" about "galumphing" off to any clinic.

Some people think anything is preferable to a chance of catching this cruel sinister COVID virus, and they are perfectly entitled to think that. They have good reasons for their position. What they should not do (often with the best of healthcare-provider intentions) is bully and chivvy others into thinking the same, if others decide differently.

We have freedom to marry whom we like, smoke what we like, we have voting rights, reproductive rights, medically assisted dying rights and so on … but surely the most fundamental of all is the right to dominion over our own bodies. The final decision about what goes into them, is ours.

Seniors' organizations are particularly keen on chivvying seniors into taking the COVID jab. Don't bother your little grey heads with all that anti-science vaccine hesitancy, they're saying. But actually the science is all over the place as regards vaccine research, and plenty of seniors are quite capable of doing their own research.

This is the "Boomer" generation, practised fact-finders, the folks who invented critical thinking, doing-your-own-thing and not necessarily believing what "the establishment" says. We're still the same cussed folks we've always been, who think the concept of bodily integrity is important. 

Right now we only have slithy and uffish people waving "vorpal swords" (needles?) at us, but when the law starts to corrode our right to move freely about, to keep jobs and housing and go to the theatre without a "Vaccination Passport" -- then another kind of "shot" will be heard -- the one sent across the bow of anti-choice. Herd immunity may or may not be a possibility, but being herded is a definite hazard, and one which many will frumiously resist. 

Confronting Neptune

Human earthlings have taken to northern seas, plunging into freezing waters from freezing beaches in an effort to “boost their mood”. Seriously. 

That's what they say they're doing, in aid of connecting with nature and “shifting away” from anxiety about COVID. It would certainly be a distraction. But why not shift away by reading a good book with a cup of tea in a warm room?

It seems they want the social life which COVID distancing and lock-downs have taken away from us -- so they swim in groups. Social life shared with other crazy people? The shock of diving into a northern ocean in the middle of winter sounds a bit like banging your head on a wall because it feels good when you stop.

Here's a suggestion, made from the bench where I sit watching in my winter coat: don't start. Last fall, on a sunny day while beach walking I decided to take my shoes off and wade. Going ankle deep was enough. Toes went numb. Little fish darted around my feet, as if outraged at my clumsy fin-less presence. I fancied they had been sent by their ruler Neptune (Poseidon to the Greeks), who wondered what on earth these earthlings were doing in the kingdom of the sea.

Good question, Neptune. Apparently, frustrated by the monotony of COVID restrictions, the winter ocean swimmers cheer themselves up by taking “just chill” to a whole new level. Or depth.

Above the bench where I sat, crows were looking down from tree tops in puzzlement. (You'd never catch a sensible crow acting like a demented pelagic cormorant.) Out on the horizon, I caught a glimpse of a blurry figure riding the waves on a sea-shell chariot, waving a three-pronged trident. The swimmers, I imagine, were too teeth-chatteringly cold to notice a turbulent ocean-god bearing down on them.