Getting vaxxed might be your only chance ever to do something mildly heroic

If you overlook the fact that we are personally involved, our lives are actually fairly mundane and unremarkable. We are born, we spend a few decades learning to function, we might become part of a family, and then we begin a process of gradual decay.

Our chances to really leave a mark that will outlive us are rather limited. We might raise some children; we may do a piece of work that continues to be relevant after we shuffle off; and then, perhaps, we might get a chance to make people’s lives better.

This last opportunity is something quite meaningful indeed.

Our family and our work are positive projects, but they’re also somewhat selfish. They’re for us, or perhaps, they’re to give our lives meaning. In the broader scheme of things, whether I have a child, or a job, does not have much social relevance.

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However, once in every generation, there sometimes comes an opportunity to be part of something larger than ourselves. To disrupt our lives and join a cause. In the past, that cause has often been a war. Our recent wars have been of dubious value. But now the chance to do something positively meaningful has indeed arrived – in the form of the opportunity to go and get vaccinated!

Look, it’s not in quite the same pantheon of greatness as sacrificing your life to a sniper’s bullet on the killing fields of battle, but it’s something. It’s a small contribution to society, that happens to also benefit us personally!

It does come with perceived risks, let’s admit. As lay people, we really have no idea what goes into these vaccines and how they work. When we get vaccinated, we place our trust in the ability of medical science to protect us from the virus.

Medical science, of course, has been improving human lifespans – and quality of life – since the 1700s, so it does have a good track record. But even the medical establishment concedes that there is a small risk attached to getting vaccinated. Tiny, vanishingly small, but it’s there.

Of the millions of people already vaccinated, a few thousand people have developed inflammation of the heart muscle and the lining outside the heart .

An even larger proportion of vaccinated people are likely to experience body aches, fever and headaches for a few days after getting jabbed. This is unpleasant, as I can indeed confirm.

But even considering all of this, it is not only worth accepting the risks and getting vaccinated, it is your best chance to do something meaningful with your life this August.

Getting vaccinated reduces our chances of getting Covid, and of passing it on to those we come into contact with. That alone sounds worthwhile to me. A guaranteed chance to help protect others.

That may be the most meaningful thing I’ve done, unless you count the time I caught my child falling off the bed, or that day in Mozambique when I shouted, “Hey, that guy’s in trouble”, and then they went and saved him.

It’s a bit dramatic, the whole getting-jabbed process. You have to find a place that will take you, and then see all these other people and then queue and then a stranger injects you with this substance. It is a bit freaky.

And, you might come down with a really bad cold afterwards.

But still.

Getting the vax is your chance to compromise your precious individual freedom and take a tiny little risk, to inconvenience yourself an infinitesimal amount. A tiny risk that might help someone else have a better life. Or a longer life.