Covid 19 Delta outbreak: Judith's Jottings - I'm grateful I was a pin cushion as a baby

The Triple J Jabbers, James Pugsley, Jannine Malcolm and Judith Lacy, show their support for NZME's campaign to have 90 per cent of eligible New Zealanders vaccinated by Christmas.

OPINION:

I don't like needles. Point one. Yes, I can sew a button on and cobble together two sides of a knitted teddy bear. But needles prick, fall and are hard to thread.

I used to like knitting needles but after getting what's now called repetitive strain injury decades ago my forearms aren't too impressed with the effort required to hold the needles.

Medical needles, I'm no fan of them but I've learnt the trick is to look away. You can't do that when you're trying to sew a label on a sock.

I've lined up for years to get my yearly flu vaccine and had no hesitancy getting my Covid shots. Neither jab hurt going in, in fact after the first I asked the nurse if she'd actually administered it.

My left arm was sore around the injection site for the first two nights as I lay on it. Luckily, I tend to fall asleep on my right side. A couple of hours after my second jab, I started shivering so put myself to bed and was fine the next morning.

Receiving a Covid jab in New Zealand is your choice. No one is going to strap you to a chair and administer a shot against your will. No one is going to sneak up behind you in the coffee queue and put one in your butt.

Choices, of course, have consequences and individual choice has to be balanced against the good of the whole.

"I'm tired of seeing the same sights on my commute to work, I'm going to drive on the righthand side of the road today."

"It's very stuffy in this plane and I can't get a good photo of the mountain, let's open the door."

Trusting in science is also a choice. Yes, we are a product of the science of our times but we also rely on science much more than we probably realise.

When we cross the Fitzherbert Bridge we trust the engineers who designed it and those who inspect and maintain it. When we put our car in reverse we trust the mechanic who serviced it and that it will actually go backwards.

We also trust medical science - antibiotics, artificial joints, anaesthetic, pacemakers, IUDs to name just a few.

Yes, development has been faster with the Covid-19 vaccine but we are in the middle of a global pandemic.

Vaccines have been around a long time but not long enough for Mum's friend Ngaire. She contracted polio when she was 10 and spent the next 70 years in a wheelchair. Ngaire could come across as a bit surly but looking through an adult lens it was most likely because one side of her face had been paralysed.

She worked in a department store, taught Sunday School, gave many a cat a loving home and travelled to England by herself. Ngaire was fiercely independent but you can't help but think how different her life would have been if the poliomyelitis vaccine had been invented before she was born.

My first and most recent vaccination records with a photo of me and my elephant Jim thrown in for good measure.

My Plunket book, maintained diligently by my mother, shows I was a bit of a pin cushion in my early years but I'm grateful. I haven't had diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles or polio.

By all means, ask questions and read about the Pfizer vaccine but make like a researcher. Talk to your doctor if it's right for you. Ask people you trust. Check your sources. Don't rely on what your neighbour's friend's son's mother-in-law said. There's certainly benefit in not being first, both as a country and as a patient.

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There's agreement across the political divide that vaccination is the way forward to opening our borders, holding mass events again and avoiding lockdowns. National has been criticising the Government for not rolling out the jab faster.

And, if you are scared of needles, close your eyes, look away and then say to yourself "I have science in my arm".