It’s flu and Covid season – if we really want to help the country, we need to get jabbed

There may be a ‘twindemic’ – flu and Covid – on the way, and the NHS needs our help

“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”, as John F Kennedy (a dangerously “woke” lefty by contemporary standards) said at his inauguration in 1961. A brilliant piece of phrasemaking – it wasn’t an entirely empty political slogan, but an invitation to turn patriotism into action.

Right now, as we watch the national currency sink lower than Boris Johnson’s reputation for personal probity, it feels like we can’t really make much impact on behalf of our country.

We could get down to the nearest bureau de change and start selling dollars, Swiss francs and euros – if we’ve got any left over from the last time we actually managed to get a flight abroad. We could make an additional payment to HMRC to reduce the national debt – £44,000 each would do it (including kids). We could “buy British”, except there often aren’t many British alternatives out there. But there is one thing we can do to help our country right now, and it won’t cost a penny: we can get jabbed. There may be a “twindemic” – flu and Covid – on the way, and the NHS needs our help.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) warns there will be lower levels of natural immunity to flu this year after people socialised less during the Covid pandemic, and thus weren’t able to build up the usual natural resistance. Makes perfect sense – and of course the over 50s have long been advised to take the flu vaccine because flu isn’t as trivial as some think. The vaccine, as ever, helps protect people against the kind of serious illness that is both distressing and economically damaging. We don’t want any more people leaving the workforce.

Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser at UKHSA, puts it plainly: “Flu and Covid-19 are unpredictable, but there are strong indications we could be facing the threat of widely circulating flu, lower levels of natural immunity due to less exposure over the last three winters and an increase in Covid-19 circulating with lots of variants that can evade the immune response. This combination poses a serious risk to our health, particularly those in high-risk groups.”

It’s not just about ourselves; it’s also about our country. To help protect the lives of others who need medical care in our hard-pressed hospitals and GP surgeries, everyone else should avoid flu and Covid and get the vaccines. As winter draws in, people will be mixing indoors much more. Transmission of all kinds of illnesses will be much increased.

As we found during the Covid emergency, that can all too easily lead to a rise in hospitalisations – and before we know it there’s increased crisis in the NHS. The lesson from the pandemic is that Covid – and now some flu cases – can load additional unbearable pressures on the NHS (especially if staff are forced to go off sick). That, in turn, means that other non-Covid and non-flu cases tend to get crowded out.

Although I’ve had all and every jab that has come my way, I’ve not yet had the “call up” for the flu vaccine or a Covid booster. But I shall. Indeed, I might go along to my local pharmacy today and see if I can get it done straight away. It doesn’t take long. Why take the risk? Why spend the Christmas season sick?

In a world where social media (and some of the fringe media) is full of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, it’s more important than ever to do the right thing and go to trusted sources for health advice – such as the NHS. Some of the anti-vax propaganda out there is well-meaning but cranky; some is derived from genuine but extremely rare cases where vaccines have had unforeseen and serious side-effects, such as blood clots. Some, disgracefully, exploits people’s fears and their grievous personal losses. Some seems frankly unhinged. The reality remains, however, that vaccines, including those for Covid, have saved many millions of lives – and prevented more serious illness in millions of people who contracted Covid during the pandemic.

According to the UKHSA, the latest data shows that having a booster reinstates high levels of protection against hospitalisation from Omicron – and maintains it for at least two or three months afterwards. This means, the agency says, that the vaccine is stopping large numbers of people from falling seriously unwell during the current Omicron wave, “in which we have seen record numbers of infections” – and is thereby preventing our NHS services from being overwhelmed.

Around 132 million Covid vaccinations were administered in the UK alone in 2021, led by the Queen as one of her many acts of leadership – and they have done enormous good. If they had not, there wouldn’t be that many of us still walking around today. Since the British pioneered the Covid vaccine drive – “ask not what the world can do for Britain, but what Britain did for the world” – tens of millions of deaths have been avoided around the world, though low-income countries are still shamefully underprotected.

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What vaccines will probably do is make you less sick than you would otherwise be, especially if you’re older. But there are other measures we should be taking, too: if we’re worried about transmission, we should all start wearing masks a bit more in crowded indoor spaces and public transport. There should also be more mandatory self-isolation after a positive test, if we want to keep the case numbers down – and keep the pressure off the NHS.

There is, unfortunately, an additional risk to consider. Whatever Liz Truss says, if a new more dangerous and transmissible Coronavirus emerges, we may have to have another lockdown.

That is all the more reason for us all to get Covid boosters – the vaccines will help keep hospitalisations low, and allow doctors to look after stroke and cancer cases, instead. “Ask not what the NHS can do for you; ask what you can do for the NHS”.