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Giving a vaccination is about the simplest medical encounter it's possible to have, though among the most transformative. A couple of questions, a pointed inquiry about allergies, then I wiped his upper arm with alcohol, and drew into a syringe 0.5ml of clear fluid from the glass vial. I pushed the needle into his arm, letting it sink into the muscle a centimetre or so. After a momentary tug on the plunger, to check I hadn't put the tip of the needle into a blood vessel, I pushed the life-giving fluid in. Needle binned, a sticking plaster, and we were done.
接种疫苗可能是最简单的医学交流，但却是最具变革意义的。问几个问题，一个尖锐的过敏问题，然后我用酒精擦拭他的上臂，从玻璃小瓶里抽出0.5毫升的透明液体，放入注射器。我把针插进他的手臂，让它在肌肉里插进一厘米左右。在短暂地拉一下活塞确认针头是否插入了血管后，我把生命之液注入了他的体内。然后把针管扔进垃圾桶，贴上橡皮膏，我们就完成了。
One by one, the over-80s began to trickle into our waiting room, relief on their faces, and gratitude, as well as a kind of questioning disbelief: is this really going to free us? Some patients I hadn't seen since March. The oldest was 95, and the youngest 79. Among many encounters, I remember one woman asking me if this was really the best use of the vaccines.
80岁以上的人一个接一个地走进我们的候诊室，脸上露出欣慰的表情，心存感激，同时心存疑虑：这真的能让我们自由吗？有些病人三月过后我就没再见过了。年龄最大的有95岁，最小的79岁。在我遇到的许多人当中，我记得有一位女士问我疫苗是不是这样用最好。
"What do you mean?" I asked.
“什么意思？”我问。
"All us old folks, doing us first. Shouldn't you be doing the teachers?"
"我们都是老年人，先给我们注射，不是应该先给老师注射吗？”
I smiled at her generosity of spirit. "It's not up to me," I said. "Now roll up your sleeve!"
我因她慷慨的精神而微笑。“这不是我能决定的，”我说。“把袖子卷上去吧!”
Only one patient so far has declined, despite my reassurances. If she gets Covid-19 as a consequence of that refusal, I know my colleagues will of course do everything they can to help her. Her arguments against immunisation were spangled with groundless conspiracy theories picked up on Facebook, and made me think of something the great Canadian physician, William Osler, said about anti-vaxxers a century ago:
尽管我再三保证，但到目前为止只有一位病人拒绝了。如果她因为拒绝而感染了新冠，我知道我的同事们也会不假思索尽他们所能去帮助她。她反对免疫接种的观点充斥着从脸书上看到的毫无根据的阴谋论，这让我想起了一个世纪前伟大的加拿大医生威廉·奥斯勒关于反疫苗者的言论：
"I will go into the next severe epidemic with 10 selected vaccinated persons and 10 selected unvaccinated persons. I should prefer to choose the latter – three members of parliament, three anti-vaccination doctors (if they can be found), and four anti-vaccination propagandists. And I will make this promise – neither to jeer nor jibe when they catch the disease, but to look after them as brothers, and for the four or five who are certain to die, I will try to arrange the funerals with all the pomp and ceremony of an anti-vaccination demonstration."
“我将带着10名已接种疫苗的人和10名未接种疫苗的人进入下一个严重的疫情。我更倾向于选择后者——三名国会议员，三名反疫苗接种医生(如果他们能找到的话)，以及四名反疫苗接种宣传人员。我必使这一承诺——当他们染上疾病时，不嘲笑他们，而是像兄弟一样照顾他们。对于那四五个人注定会死的人，我会尽力安排葬礼，像反疫苗游行一样隆重的葬礼。
Now that we're more than a month into the vaccinations, the hope is that we should continue to see hospitalisations fall, and fall, and fall. Early evidence is confirming the pattern, and anecdotally, a 95-year-old friend of my family – a woman who minded me when I was a boy – caught Covid three weeks after her first dose, and developed a cough and a mild fever, but that's all. Many similar stories are emerging of Covid-19 being rendered milder by vaccination, with fewer requiring hospitalisation.
现在距离我们接种疫苗已经有一个多月了，我们希望看到住院治疗的病人不断减少。早期证据证实了这一模式，我的一位95岁的朋友也证实了这一点——一个在我小时候关心我的女人——她在注射第一针疫苗的三周后感染了新冠，开始咳嗽和轻微发烧，不过仅仅如此。许多类似的情况正在出现，即通过接种疫苗，新冠的症状有所缓解，需要住院治疗的病例也减少了。
