Reluctantly, I took my first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine—the Oxford AstraZeneca one, no choice was offered—and I am dreading the second dose. I had a day in bed with ‘flu-like’ symptoms followed by a week of feeling miserable. Had I been allowed to go to my office, I would not have been able to. Now that my immune system is ready and wating, the second dose will only be worse. When I say ‘reluctantly’, I am not anti-vaccination as I have made clear, but I think the COVID-19 vaccinations are probably unnecessary and not fully tested in the way previous vaccines have been. And to add social insult to the immunological injury I received, the vaccine seems to be having little influence on the UK government’s decisions to get us out of lockdown. Sometimes, I wonder if the Prime Minister, SAGE and other assorted doom-mongers are just having too much fun.
So, why did I take the vaccine? My sole reason was to get back to long-haul flying. Pandemics permitting, I fly approximately 150,000 miles annually, and most of those are flown to mainland China. While detesting the Chinese regime, I am a Sinophile and love the Chinese people. I work in a UK university and my Chinese doctoral students and visiting scholars are among the hardest working and most productive students I have ever supervised. When in China, they are a joy to teach. Holding several visiting and honorary positions in China and having valuable consultancy work there and a year of a very prestigious and lucrative scholarship to complete, I am keen to get back to China. But it seems this may be impossible now.
The Chinese government cynically announced the easing of travel restrictions into China, on the one hand, and then whipped them away with the other by saying that they would only accept visitors who had taken two doses of an approved Chinese vaccination; one made and administered by them. These vaccines are not available in most of the countries, including the UK, that were on the list of countries from which visitors are now permitted to enter China. Effectively, this makes travel to China from these countries impossible. Nothing that China ever does surprises me. They have made the visa application process increasingly difficult and stressful over recent years, with no apparent reason. They delight in obscure rules and regulations and maximum inconvenience for anyone but themselves. What does surprise me is that there has not been a single comment that I can find, far less outrage, from the UK government at this move.
While two wrongs rarely make anything right, surely this is an appropriate time to reciprocate and there is an obvious way to do this. Simple: ease travel restrictions from China to the UK but insist that Chinese visitors have had two doses of a UK approved vaccine. That list should, specifically, exclude Chinese vaccines. If they do not come to their senses, then invite all the diplomatic staff at the Chinese Embassy in London and the consulates in Manchester and Edinburgh to take two doses of a UK approved vaccine. I they refuse then put them on the next flight to Peking. Ping pong!
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