Vaccinated

I had my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine on Wednesday morning. I didn’t really know what to expect from it, because my mum (who had AstraZenica) spent about 3-4 days feeling like she had flu, whereas my dad had absolutely no reaction whatsoever. I had a bit of a headache and an achy arm in the afternoon but nothing much. I went for a run on Thursday morning and found I didn’t have any energy and ended up cutting it short, then Thursday afternoon and evening my left leg was aching a lot all over, like I’d really overdone the running (I hadn’t). I ran again this morning and it was much better. And my leg doesn’t ache.

I was worried a bit that I’d react to it like my mum did. I had an upset stomach last week and I really wasn’t looking forward to another few days of feeling horrible.

Also, on the medical theme, the NHS is going to start sharing medical records with commercial third parties starting in July. If you haven’t heard anything about this, it’s probably because they’ve kept it very quiet. The data is ‘pseudonymous’ rather than anonymous, meaning that while it won’t have your name in it, it certainly can be used to identify people. Personally I think as a whole, this is appalling. This is an NHS Digital initiative, but hasn’t been adequately publicised by NHS Digital, who are acting as if it’s the individual GPs responsibility to inform patients even though it’s a national issue. The fact it’s happening as an opt-out system under a short timescale without any effort to inform patients is bad, and the opt-out is complicated and confusing (as there are two different opt-outs) and inconvenient as you need to locate, print, and submit a paper form to your GP specifying your preference. Making the opt-out paper based is a little ironic given that we’re talking about massive digital data collection.

It’s hard to look at this and assume good faith.

There are some details on how to opt-out here. The overall story is covered by the Financial Times.