Day 322: Jags

Tuesday, 9 February 2021

After the first lockdown on 23 March 2020, we were told that the pandemic would not be over until a vaccine arrived and that this would not be before 2021. Unusually, progress was quicker than expected and the first vaccines became available in December 2020. By virtue of age, I was in the first four groups to be eligible for vaccination, after the NHS staff, care home staff and residents and over 80s. Today was the day for our first dose and we headed for the Medical Centre that has been closed all year owing to Covid. Any consultations have been largely restricted to telephone calls or NHS 24. The two practice nurses were on duty with the GP and a couple of the practice staff in attendance to supervise the vaccination of 200 baby boomers who were rattled through safely at 3-minute intervals. 

The imperative of being on time and an overnight fall of snow had meant that I had been harried into leaving home early, the mercury was still falling under the now clear skies. We arrived 25 minutes ahead of our appointed time so I took a 15-minute walk around the snowscaped paths in the village to kill some time and to compensate for the loss of my normal morning walk that was discouraged immediately after a vaccination.  

Linda is the practice nurse whom I have seen regularly for the past ten years, she is meticulous in everything she does. When I was prescribed warfarin after being diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, I had to visit her every week to monitor my blood count. We had become good friends as we announced new grandchildren and shared stories. It took the full three minutes as Linda repeated all the do's and don'ts of the Astra Zeneca vaccine and gave me the dates for the second dose in 12 weeks, the GPs were playing by the government guidance. I discovered that the practice was only doing vaccinations one day a week and that they were already ahead of schedule. Like many others we were disappointed that it was the Astra Zeneca vaccine, the published results of its efficacy are far below that of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Questions about its suitability for the over 65s and questionable protection against the South African variant have not enhanced its popularity but most GPs do not have the storage facilities for the Pfizer vaccine that seems to have been largely used for health workers and those visiting the massive vaccination centres in the big cities..

The First Minister's persistent claim that Scotland was behind the rest of the UK in its vaccination rates because it was focusing on care homes first sounds like a lame excuse. The Medical Centre probably could have vaccinated its entire practice list by now if they had been allowed, and the vaccines had been made available earlier to the GP practices instead of restricted to hospitals and vaccination centres in the early weeks. Meanwhile, HC - One, the largest care home organisation in the UK and owner of many of the Scottish Care Homes that had the highest number of Covid deaths has said that 40% of its staff have yet to be vaccinated. Other care home providers have indicated that up to 20% of staff were refusing to be vaccinated. These figures do question the First Minister's much-repeated claim that Scotland had vaccinated 99.5% of those in care homes, I doubt it. It is worrying, apart from the unacceptable failure to protect care homes, I had largely trusted the First Minister in her handling of the pandemic but there is a tetchy defensiveness about some of her recent announcements.

We returned home and I joined four former colleagues to record a Zoom video for posterity on a website we have created to capture our experiences at the sharp end of local democracy. It was the fifteenth in a series of recordings but we were unhappy with the outcome. We decided we would have another go at it next week. We had had a paper published in the Herald last week on the need to reconsider holding the Scottish Parliament election on 6 May and discussed what else we should do on this score.

I decided to continue my prescribed rest by watching politics live, one of the best current affairs programmes chaired with great perspicacity and efficiency by Jo Coburn. What a contrast with the ponderous, heavy-handed pomposity of her predecessor, Andrew Neil, the Paisley pitbull. She creates an informality and stage for courteous debate between politicians of all persuasions, journalists and an occasional celebrity. Today we had the straight-talking sense of David Blunkett with two new Tory MPs and the excellent political editor of the Mirror, Pippa Crerar. They were joined briefly by Joanna Lumley who is trying to save the seabed from the explosion of wartime bombs when creating shelves for offshore wind turbines. The first rule of a debate with a national treasure is that you don't argue with them and even David Blunkett observed this obligation. 

By 3pm, I was getting frisky and with no repercussions from the vaccine, I took off for a quick walk up Lime Craig, my 20th visit this year. It was unusually quiet, the underfoot conditions were perfect with powder snow covering the frozen and in places icy base. The air was still and cold, ideal for thinking through how I would present my thoughts on producing a place plan for the community. Two of us had been asked to take a lead on this and we were reporting back to a Zoom meeting of the Community Trust in the evening. When I returned home I phoned Joyce, my colleague on this venture,  and we decided how to make the presentation. 

After watching the Scottish news and the start of the Channel 4 news, I joined the Zoom meeting. Conversations are strangely muted as you wait for others to arrive and there are always those who are really muted and have to be hand signalled in. Our 45-minute slot expanded to an hour and a half as the Trustees got themselves caught in a circular discussion about procedures. I think we eventually reached a decision but the balance of governance between control, transparency, ownership and action is always a precarious one.

And then there was just time to catch up on the night's football matches, the news and to watch Newsnight on the first day of the Trump impeachment trial in the Senate.