Confessions of a ‘clinically extremely vulnerable person’                                                      

The pressure to speed up the return to normal — albeit the “new normal” — grows apace. It is fuelled by the announcement last Friday that the vaccination process is almost two months ahead of a timetable which was once regarded as merely another over-ambitious example of Boris’s chest-thumping. 

OK, vaccination really has been a great success. And the lockdown must have helped too. For the daily death rate from the virus is falling fast. But remember the world-class track and trace system we were promised? Remember the phrase “it will all be over by Christmas”? (That one was first coined in the autumn of 1914, and we know how accurate that was.) Remember the claims that things would be hunky-dory by last summer, by Christmas, and now by Easter? We can be forgiven for taking Boris’s boasts with a pinch of salt. The man has form.

I was one of the lucky ones. As an 82-year-old, with heart problems, living alone, I was given my initial Pfizer jab early in December. Then, on 9 January I received my second. I was grateful, elated. I felt liberated. After all, the research then available showed that two jabs meant that I was around 93 per cent immune. And if I were, against the overwhelming odds, to be infected, it would be mild. Almost certainly not requiring intensive care in hospital. “Free at last, Oh Lord”, as America’s 1960s civil rights demonstrators used to chant.

I was even the possessor of an official card presented to me at the vaccination centre, stating the dates on which I had been given my two jabs, and that they were of the Pfizer variety. The batch codes were identified. It was – in all but name – a passport. When pubs and restaurants reopened, I could wave it proudly at the door. My only moral restraint was that I could in theory become an asymptomatic, and therefore unconscious, carrier at some stage. And — crucial point — it was not clear whether my jabs would stop me passing that infection on to someone far more vulnerable. Then more evidence emerged. Still not definite, but almost certainly such transmission is close to impossible. 

Even so, I have observed the lockdown rules . . . so far, more or less. It was not difficult. There were no bookshops (essential shopping in my world). No exhibitions, no museums and no galleries open. No restaurants or pubs. My club was closed. And the weather in January and February was unpredictable, but usually cold and damp. Why would I bother sitting in freezing, deserted, Soho Square, a two-minute walk from my flat, and risk the wrath of some Soviet-style busybody denouncing me, because I was neither doing essential shopping, nor exercising? 

Then out of the blue came a letter dated 24 February 2021 from the Department of Health and Social Care. It identified itself as “a formal shielding notification”. It accepted that “the rates of infection overall are declining”. But then came the kicker. “You may be [note the weasel words “may be”] at high risk and have been added to to the list of people who are clinically extremely vulnerable (also known as the shielded patient list)”. There was no explanation of why I had been added to the list. I had been trucking along perfectly happily for the previous twelve months. 

Then came another weasel word: this time announcing what the Government would “advise” — though to be fair, it was later conceded that “the following advice is not the law”. And what was the advice which followed? Until the end of March I was to stay at home as much as possible “except to exercise or to attend health appointments (including of course for vaccination appointments)”.  That parenthetical phrase “(including of course for vaccination appointments)” might have been designed to rub salt in my wounds. Or perhaps it was a heavy joke.

Since then I have received two telephone notifications of my new status from Westminster City Council, and another saying much the same from a leading teaching hospital. They were no doubt kindly meant, and offered me help if needed. I suppose I should have been grateful for the attention. Even so . . .      

As I write, the the sun is belting down. It is a beautiful springlike day. I’m going to pop round to the local supermarket. I will do some shopping and then have a nice sit down in Soho Square, to read a book. I might dare to chat with someone outside my bubble. Perhaps take a sandwich and a thermos of coffee, though that would make my lonely outing a — possibly criminal — one-man picnic. But, given the Government’s mixed messaging, do you blame me?

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