Pleasant old man gets COVID vaccine: "I hope that I'm not going to have the bloody bug now"
Aux Features Aux
After months and months of waiting, the COVID-19 vaccine is starting to become publicly available. CNN broadcast from London yesterday to cover this historic moment and happened upon Martin Kenyon, a 91-year old man who’s among the first people in the United Kingdom to receive the vaccination. He’s also a really good interview subject.
Kenyon is shown explaining the process of getting a vaccination appointment—a process he calls “not very interesting.” Kenyon says he telephoned London’s Guy’s Hospital, asked if he could get the shot, and then… went and got it. “It didn’t hurt at all,” he says. The biggest pain was trying to find a parking spot and the “rather nasty lunch” he had before receiving the shot. When asked how he feels about being one of the first people in the world to get the vaccine, Kenyon responds: “I don’t think I feel about it at all, except that I hope I’m not going to have the bloody bug now.”
“I don’t intend to have it because I have granddaughters and I want to live a long time to enjoy their lives,” he continues. He goes on to explain more about the vaccination and shows off his follow-up appointment card, which, in his words, is “very unexciting” to look at. Before the end of the interview, he says he “doesn’t intend to have [the virus.]”
“Well, there’s no point in dying now when I have lived this long, is there?” Kenyon adds. “I don’t plan to anyway.”
Not only is Kenyon a great advertisement for the benefits of not being a total numbskull and letting medical experts protect you from a deadly virus, but his story also illustrates that it’s more than possible for a country to make it so the biggest headache of arranging a vaccination is the fact that hospital parking can be hard to find.
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42 Comments
I hate living in a world where ‘man gets vaccinated’ qualifies as a news story.
It’s still better than the alternative headlines of “we still don’t know when a vaccine is coming or if it will work”the part I hate was the 8 months leading up to “man gets vaccinated” that saw the deaths of over 1.5 million people.
It’s better than the world I’m living in: where “man refuses to get vaccinated” is a news story.
I’d edit that to be “Too many very loud men”
Just wait until the story is “Protesters Block Vaccine Shipments” or “Vaccine Protesters Picket Clinics”. It’s like they’re fighting for the virus.
“It’s like they’re fighting for the virus.”Well…. seeing as how the virus seems to kill three times more Black and Latinx people than white people, are you really that surprised?
GOVERNMENT NEEDLES OLD WHITE DUDE!
To be fair, it was like this in the past as well:
I’ll always resent polio for not finishing Mitch McConnell off when it had the chance.
His eyes when he’s talking about the parking … that’s a hell of a flashback.
Oh, thank you. One of my favorite all-time moments. A great short.
Hospital parking here’s no joke. With the Tories in power, that’s where 90% of the budget comes from.
After months and months of waiting, the COVID-19 vaccine is starting to become publicly available.
Not in North America, it’s not.
Martin Kenyon is the sort of person who makes the rest of the world think that everyone in the United Kingdom and Ireland is an extra in some huge, ongoing production of Waking Ned Devine. No-nonsense, stoic, practical, pragmatic, and a darkly quirky sense of humour? Check.Alas, unless the UK has changed a lot since I lived there in the 1990s, Martin is certainly representative of his generation of Brits – those old enough to remember World War II (my English mother-in-law, born in 1921, was very similar) – but not quite as representative of younger generations of people there, who are less “We’re all in this together so keep calm and carry on” and more “You’re not the boss of me”.
Stiff upper lip! Pip pip cheerio!
Your last paragraph is also the reason for their strange and unhealthy obession of WWII which led to UKIP, Brexit, and shitheads like Nigel Farrage and Jacob Rees Mogg getting elected.
To be fair, that more describes the boomer generation than those after. We have our share of weakeners in all generations, of course, but the Faragists and Brexiters and general ruiners of all things good overwhelmingly come from the postwar stock.
You mean Waking Ned? I believe Devine was added for the American release. God what a great film though.
There was a protest in England over the weekend with a thousand or so people singing “You can shove the poisoned vaccine up your ass” in unison, so I’d say your assumption is probably right.
You’re just describing Boomers, basically, who seem to be the same throughout the west. Luckily there have been two subsequent generations born in the UK who overwhelmingly voted against Brexit and have been huddled inside for a year while the people you describe have been having garden parties and complaining their yields on their second homes are less than they’d hoped.
In his defense, hospital parking lots are SO CONFUSING. Easily the most confusing of all the parking lots in the world.
Clearly you’ve never been to Trader Joe’s.
He said confusing, not chaotic.
haha, very good call. But I’d argue TJ’s lots are less a confusing labyrinth and more a poorly appointed lawless hellscape. Capital Hill Seattle Trader Joes veteran here.
Seriously. Get the fucking thing. Today’s my first day back at work after having it. While I was gone, 5 others up here were diagnosed and 1 has died. Get the fucking vaccine. As soon as it’s possible.
Are you in the UK? My understanding in the states is that most of us will not be able to get it until next year. First responders and at-risk people first and shortages expected until at least middle of next year
I’m in the US. But what I said still applies: Get it as soon as you can.
Sorry I misread your original post. I thought you said it was your first day back after getting the vaccine. Not your first day back after having the rona. Yeah I had it a few months back and it sucks. I felt like I was breathing glass for a week
I guess I didn’t make that very clear, did I? Yeah, I had the virus, not the vaccine. And my wife and son. There’s the possibility that my job could be considered a front-line worker position, which would get me moved up in the line, but I’m not going to rest easier until all three of us, and my parents in their 70’s have all had the vaccine.
Ditto. Me and my wife and kids got it back in May and even though we may have developed immunity we didn’t mess around and start just going back to normal. My wifes doctor, who just go over it himself, basically said that its very unclear how long you are immune after you get it and it can vary wildly from person to person. We plan to get the vaccine once we can as well. I am definetly not “front line”, I worked from home for ten years before the virus and my wife and kids are at home so we probably wont get access until a few months into 2021 at the earliest. Will mean a cold boring winter and spring at home but maybe freedom by the summer
It gets better — according to the Guardian: Kenyon was involved in the anti-apartheid movement and is the godfather of one of Desmond Tutu’s daughters. Tutu is also godfather to one of Kenyon’s daughters. The pair met as students in London. He said the two became friends immediately. “We went off talking and didn’t draw a breath,” he said.
‘Deeply boring’: Martin Kenyon puzzled by vaccine video fame | World news | The Guardian
I love this man and wish him well.
The only way that could be any more British is . . . well, actually, I don’t think there’s a way in the world that could be any more British.
Cuppa tea, Guv’?
What if he got vaccinated while at the pub?
Maybe if the vaccine was thrown at him like a dart while he sipped a pint draped in a football scarf.
Or a soc…FOOTBALL match?
The only way would be if we found out that Martin is a pseudonym, and his actual name is Nigel.
Did anyone tell him he has to find parking again in two weeks for the booster?
in related news it seems like the anti-vax segment of Cult 45 is gearing up for more of their bullshit now just as the “voter fraud” sect of the cult is losing steam. I’ve had a few mentally taxing “conversations” with some of the “I’m just asking questions” crew and it leaves me feeling like I want to beat my head into a wall. One of these “internet scholars” wasn’t going to get the Covid-19 vaccine because “Bill Gates is behind this and he wanted to sterilize African women with a vaccination.” That particular batshit conspiracy theory was so far down the rabbit hole I had to spend a few minutes actually researching it.
My reply to these fuckwits is usually “Why are you asking questions if you don’t want to hear the answers?”