Taking care of our Mental Health is a way of life. It’s not something that you can switch on and off from, you need to make it a firm priority and take daily care of yourself.
Social media is of course a rabbit-hole of images, words and links that can have direct impact on our mental health, but at the moment the posts that I find hardest to take are the ones regarding vaccinations.
On the plus side, it is wonderful that the vaccinations are taking place and more and more people are being protected. But below the surface there is a real flare of injustice regarding the whole process. I sometimes sit here worrying Is The System Broken?
I preface what I am about to write with the following:
This post is not aimed at any one individual. I believe those plotting against the system for their own gain to be few and far between. I do not know individual people’s circumstances and neither is it really any of my business, BUT and it’s a big but (#ILIKEBIGBUTS) I am seeing a whole host of people on social media receiving vaccinations in their twenties and thirties, when I have family members in their late sixties and early seventies who have not even had a look in, friends and aquaintances with serious medical conditions who have not been called, and colleagues who are keyworkers with no option but to go to work, who could be waiting for eight months for their chance to vaccinate.
How is this possible? Are some counties so short of elderly people that they are already able to vaccinate younger people?
If this were a few instances, I would put this down to an individual’s underlying health issues, but this is a not a small number of people – it simply doesn’t make sense. In the older generations of my extended family, I have people with Diabetes, brain conditions, severe asthma… why haven’t they been given their vaccinations when people at much lower risk have.
I have been pontificating on the unfairness of this situation far too much. it can become all-consuming which is not good for me, so I decided to tap it into my keyboard instead of letting it stew.
I tend not to touch upon politics (it’s far too loaded) but I will say this:
Why am I surprised?
If I was offered a vaccine I would 100% accept it. This is NOT a critiscsim of individuals. But please, please, please… This system has to make sense. I am so disenfranchised by this whole sodding palaver that I don’t know what to feel other than this insane and overwhelming sense of dread and anxiety.
I sincerely hope that we manage to vaccinate those most at risk as soon as is humanly possible – this virus has had too large an impact on our communities already.
For now, I will try to take a step back, this isn’t personal, I know. But to the government I say the following:
Make sure that you do not penalise people for playing by the rules. The majority of people are waiting for news on when they can get access to their vaccination, and we must hold those people trying to divert around the due process, accountable. Doctors surgeries are asking us not to enquire about the vaccinations and that they will contact us when we are eligible… don’t let people fall through the net with their good faith.
I wish all of my readers the best for the coming months, and access to the vaccine whenever that time may come, and of course if that is what you want. Please take care of you and your mental health, I will be trying to do the same.
Stay Safe.
ThatIsBeyond 