First jab done!
Wales has opened up vaccinations to 40-49 year olds so my wife phoned up the local number for the Mass Vaccination Centres (MVCs) a few times last Friday (patience needed before getting on the queue!) and we had our jabs yesterday! Very well organised so thanks to all involved with this!
We are lucky enough to live within walking distance of one of the MVCs. All very smooth – people there to signpost where to go, lines move quickly, a few military personnel mixed in with NHS professionals (medical and administrative). My jab was given by a very nice yet efficient lady. Pfizer-BioNTech, which makes sense logistically – easier to have the freezers needed at an MVC and distribute the AstraZeneca vaccines to individual doctors' surgeries.
My arm hurts today but other than that no side effects. Should get the follow-up jab in 4-12 weeks. Step in the right direction for our own route out of lockdown.
We also went to Penarth over the weekend and saw the sea. Furthest we've been in over a year but a medical appointment over there necessitated it. First time in a taxi in that long too! Dragon Taxi (great name!) were very professional... we do like supporting them rather than Uber etc. They seem more rooted in the place somehow.
I've never really jumped onto the whole app-enabled “gig economy” bandwagon, probably as a result of living in the Bay Area where Uber started and where the individual drivers had far fewer rights and protections than UK gig economy workers... although I have grudgingly used food delivery apps like Deliveroo during the pandemic every now and again to get variety in our lives after resisting for months at the start.
With the large gig economy tech firms, something about their shifting of responsibility for both the services and worker-welfare onto individuals rather than taking company level ownership of it has always rubbed me the wrong way, although I've been watching the push back with mild interest to see where different societies draw (and re-draw) their lines on this.
A tech professional friend of mine once said something on this topic that stuck with me. Gig economy tech firms had a definite choice. They could always have just developed their platforms and sold/licenced them to existing companies but instead have sparked a wider societal transition in how people access and use services across transportation, hotels (Airbnb) and other sectors. Could be that I was just a little too old and grumpy when this came along but I still prefer (and trust!) the more regulated traditional service deliverers.
Anyway, one jab down, one to go; the weather is sunnier... and so (with caveats) am I!
Entry 78 of my participation in the “100 Days to Offload” challenge – find out more and join in!
2021-04-12 #100DaysToOffload #lockdown #technology #economy
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