Well, it’s a step forward.
Today I had an SMS from the health authorities informing me that I am part of one of the groups called to be vaccinated against Covid-19 and urging me to request my appointment to get vaccinated. Which I of course did, except (isn’t there always an ‘except’?) in all the centres that I selected I was told that there were no appointments available.
So. How am I supposed to take this?
I have previously been told that I will be ‘called up’ in exactly the same way that I have been when I get my winter flu jab in, or under the supervision of my local CAP (Health Centre), through the receipt of an SMS. Perhaps this pro-active approach is just to keep us quiet as we try (and fail) to get an appointment, but to make us think that “at least we are on the system, and that is a good first step, eh?”
Let it pass that ALL my friends of a similar age in the UK (and those a damn sight younger) have ALL had their first jabs, and I do not even have a firm date for my vaccination.
Still, the centres’ vaccine availability is updated weekly, so first thing on Monday morning (after my swim and cup of tea) I will be re-entering all my information to try my luck at another round of Vaccine Jackpot!
In a nice reversal of blame, it now becomes my fault that I have not been vaccinated, as the onus has been placed on me to find a centre. To be fair, I have only tried those centres that are within a reasonable (however you define that word in relation to a pandemic) distance from my home. And you could always argue that were I to be truly serious about getting vaccinated, then I wouldn’t be so parochial and I would willingly venture into parts of Catalonia that I have only heretofore seen on maps!
Or I could wait for my CAP to call me. I think that will allow another week of querulous prevarication!
And at least I am on the system, and that has to be positive, doesn’t it?
While I had my swim (and cup of tea) Toni was able to meet up with his sisters and his two nephews. This meeting took place at our almost-local Outlet, full of logo heavy shops selling still overpriced items to an ever-credulous public. In which of course I place myself. But, as I was occupied in ploughing my watery way up and down the 25-metre lane of the swimming pool, I was unable to join them.
I am not averse to visiting the Outlet, in spite of the fact that it does not have a Wedgewood Shop – but, there again, where does nowadays – where I can vicariously indulge my mother-inspired love of china, glass and cutlery. But there are limits to the shopping masochism to which I will willingly lend myself: to go to an Outlet with one determined woman shopper might be regarded as foolhardy, to go with two smacks of the sort of extremism that destroys empires! And two adolescent boys!
Anyway, I didn’t go and given my lack of a vaccine (see above) I am sort-of relieved. Both the boys and their mother have had Covid – and I’m not sure if that makes them more or less worrying for an unvaccinated person. As with so many impulses during this pandemic, isolationism and a sturdy stance of anti-society isolationism is the better bet!
But we have now had more than a year where the normal interaction in the family has been stopped, the celebrations of Name Days and Birthdays have been via Zoom and, I have to admit, thoroughly unsatisfactory. The joint visits to the beach have not taken place during the last summer and, given the rate of vaccination in Catalonia it looks more than likely that they will not take place during this summer (when we finally get to it) as well.
Spain has said that they are thinking of delaying the second jab follow up to the AZ vaccine to 16 weeks after the first jab: that means 4 months. Given that tomorrow is May Day, that means that given the delay and the time necessary for the two jabs to come to full strength, it is going to be well into September until this tranche of people is fully vaccinated.
I am in Group 5C and it is only today that I had the invitation (not an appointment) to try for the vaccine – so, if I had the injection tomorrow on May Day, it would the beginning of August before I was fully vaccinated. And I am not getting the vaccine tomorrow!
The projected timetable for full (70%) vaccination for herd immunity here in Catalonia looks ever more optimistic! And are we seriously going to be welcoming tourists into our Covid hot spots during the summer?
Commerce is driving out sense!
