I MET up with a group of old friends the other day – people I have not seen in months due to Covid restrictions. The food was good and the outdoor venue pleasant, but risky in a Scottish summer.
I have worked with each of these friends for many years and have come to trust and respect them. Indeed, I thought we shared similar outlooks. I was wrong.
Understanding that people can experience things differently and knowing that we were a disputatious crew anyway, I was nonetheless surprised to hear their thoughts on lockdowns, vaccines, and Covid passports.
They all approved of our Great Scottish leader’s approach. Not to labour the point, but I got the sense that I had become somehow alien. Although all of three of them are healthy, each has been double vaccinated; one with AstraZeneca, and two with Pfizer-BioNTech.
Apparently the one who received the AstraZeneca jab was ‘knocked for six,’ by the first shot, but decided to go ahead with the second on his doctor’s advice, because he wanted to be able to travel. The second dose made him very unwell, but ‘he thinks he’s over it now’.
The other two said that the Pfizer jabs were the ‘best available’ – they are both medics – and that although they had been ‘a bit off their game for a few days after the vaccine,’ everything was now fine.
They ‘couldn’t see an alternative’ if they wanted to work, and had decided before I arrived, to tell me that I ‘ought to go ahead and get mine.’
I was genuinely bewildered and sad that they had been taken in by Covid propaganda and further, that they were now not just compliant, but also prepared to proselytise the Message.
I left with a fierce feeling of dread that has stayed with me.
