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I am having my booster today. In common with millions of others who have been summoned to get their third dose of the Covid vaccine, I am looking forward to my jab. So much so, in fact, that
when my wife has had hers, too, we will probably celebrate with a glass of something sparkling. Why? Because getting a vaccine that offers up to 97 per cent protection against a virus that
is still mutating and still killing hundreds of Britons a day, that has already killed 142,000 people in the UK and five million worldwide, really is something to celebrate. But for the
vaccine, those figures would be much, much worse and our lives would be subject to far greater restrictions. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees, apparently. I find it worrying that so many
people are reluctant to benefit from such a miraculous prophylactic. Were they to become seriously ill with Covid, would they refuse to be treated with the equally miraculous new drugs that
are being improved all the time? As we approach the first anniversary of the inoculation programme, the argument that the various vaccines were developed too rapidly to be trustworthy has
lost any plausibility it may have had. We now know that all the vaccines approved for use in the UK are indeed safe and highly effective. So it is shocking that as many as 73,000 NHS staff
are reported to be holding out against the jab, even if it means risking their professional status. What more evidence could they demand or expect? And what possible justification could they
offer to the vulnerable patients whose lives they are placing In jeopardy? No doubt these people are as dedicated to their work as their colleagues, but by their stubborn resistance to the
science they pose a real threat to the health service, which would be hard-pressed to replace so many at once. What an irony it would be if the NHS were indeed overwhelmed because tens of
thousands of its own staff are in denial. Every day brings news of scientific breakthroughs in the battle against Covid, some of them with implications that go far beyond the pandemic.
Today, for example, the journal _Nature _publishes research at UCL which explains why many NHS workers who were exposed to the virus before vaccines were available nevertheless remained
unharmed. What protected them were the now famous Tcells, which can destroy infected cells and are the result of exposure to other coronaviruses, including the common cold. What this means
is that we should be able to develop a new type of vaccine to help the immune system to eliminate the virus before it can replicate. Such a vaccine, using not antibodies but Tcells that
recognise the RTC protein inside the virus, has the potential to protect against all variants of Covid and indeed all coronaviruses. So the threat of a new pandemic, caused by the
transmission of a virus from animals to humans, could soon be banished. This is the kind of cutting-edge science that has been stimulated by the terrible ordeal that countless people have
endured or are still enduring. We should never forget that a significant proportion of the nine million Britons (and more than 250 million worldwide, almost certainly an underestimate) who
have recovered from the virus will suffer lasting damage — so-called long Covid. We still don’t understand this phenomenon well, but it can be measured and we know that it can affect much
younger people than those whose lives are normally at risk. The economist Benedikt Koehler, a regular contributor to _TheArticle, _wrote here about a study by scientists at Heinrich Heine
University in Düsseldorf which showed that footballers who had recovered from Covid performed significantly less well than those who never had it. Another reason, then, to get one’s jab as
soon as possible. The word “boosterish” has become associated with our present Prime Minister, who this week chose to visit a hospital to encourage people to get their jabs rather than be
in the Commons to pick over the entrails of the Owen Paterson case. The MPs and journalists who found this choice inexplicable and inexcusable may not, like him, have come within a hair’s
breadth of death from Covid. But whatever your view of Boris Johnson, I make no apology for being boosterish about the booster. It’s a perfect example of Benjamin Franklin’s adage: doing
well by doing good. Whoever you are, whatever your age, even if you are pregnant — _especially _if you’re pregnant — as soon as it’s your turn, please go and get jabbed.