This week my son got his flu booster, which was about as pleasant an experience as it ever is, but now comes freighted with the added pang of political concerns. People don’t read this column for agitprop. Or rather, if they do it’s about my usual bugbears – the demented politics of Paw Patrol, the tyranny of heated plates, my continued exasperation that British people don’t thank their drivers as they exit a bus. But, occasionally, bigger themes do emerge. I speak not of my excoriating attacks on the Irish seasonal calendar or the practice of serving lasagne with coleslaw, but of vaccines – and specifically those who wish to muddy the waters around their efficacy.
Like many, I’ve witnessed a small number of acquaintances becoming entrenched in their scepticism about vaccines. Darkly muttered doggerel about micro-chips and new world orders crept in during the pandemic and is now uttered regarding flu, MMR and other jabs. That these take the form of hastily pasted screeds about Bill Gates’s sudden desire to control the mind of Auntie Pauline in South Armagh, is admittedly quite funny. The fact they’re in reaction to a global pandemic, against which vaccines and boosters have been shown to be our best rebuke, is just depressing.
The last time I mentioned my son getting his flu jab was August 2019, when the charlatanry of anti-vaxxers seemed a fringe concern, albeit one about which I personally felt extremely agitated. It is striking for me to re-read that article now and see myself referencing ‘herd immunity’, a term I had to specifically look up to make sure I was using it correctly. Six months later it would become household jargon, and a new, more virulent strain of anti-vaxxer would enter the public sphere.
My son is a bit of an anti-vaxxer himself, I guess, kicking and screaming, right up until the minute his booster has been administered, at which point he’s provided with stickers for his stoicism and forbearance. He doesn’t like this process and, to be honest, neither do we, but maintaining our child’s immunisations is not merely good for him, it’s good for those around us who can’t receive them, and therefore need the greater protection an inoculated populace provides them. It’s part of the social contract and one I’d be willing to oblige, even if there were no stickers. Luckily there are, which sweetens the deal marvellously.
For millions of years, people got sick and died of things that no longer bother us, illnesses to which we became inoculated the hard way. Diseases so removed from our privileged position in the modern world that my son’s favourite pirate cartoons frequently make jokes about things like the black death and bubonic plague, which is a bit weird when you think about it. But comedy is, after all, tragedy plus time. It’s just that, occasionally, time marches backwards, and we should be careful that we don’t indulge the whims of those whose actions will ensure such tragedy stops being funny any more. Get your jabs and tell Auntie Pauline to do the same. It’s not enough for us to ignore the kicking and the screaming, it should be challenged and addressed wherever we find it. If we need to offer a few stickers to sweeten the deal, then so be it.
Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? by Séamas O’Reilly is out now (Little, Brown, £16.99). Buy a copy from guardianbookshop at £14.78
Follow Séamas on Twitter @shockproofbeats
