That is strange and distinctly unusual.

Our Glorious Leaders seem to be doing something right for a change.

There was a big hoohah the other day when the first vaccines arrived. We were treated to a load of images of a refrigerator and a fork-lift truck unloading boxes. How exciting. We are saved! The great solution was here in a refrigerator in west Dublin.

And there it stays.

The Great Solution is just sitting there in its fridge doing nothing. No fanfares or breathless images of some old geezer being needled or anything like that. The vaccine is here but doing nothing. Just sitting there, frozen at minus seventy or so degrees.

I did wonder about this. The Pfizer concoction apparently can only last seven days or so in its freezer, before becoming unstable so you would imagine they would want to start using it as quickly as possible. But they told us the first lot would be needled on Wednesday. Why the delay? They had enough time to set everything up but they are doing nothing. I confess I was a little baffled.

I see now that they are actually being quite sensible. The Pfizer lot has arrived but they are actually waiting on the Oxford version to be released. Presumably they’ll have to jab a few people with the Pfizer brew just to satisfy the newsreels but in actual fact they are playing the long game.

According to Varadkar, Ireland will likely start vaccinations a little bit slower compared to other countries around the world, but the programme will be accelerated as more vaccines are approved by the EU.

A significant reason behind Varadkar’s reasoning is that the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine could be approved by the end of January, with Ireland having a significant number of doses preordered.

“We’ve preordered a huge number of them, more so than we did for Pfizer and also that one doesn’t require deep cold-chain. That’s a more normal vaccine that we’d be used to using in GP surgeries and pharmacies that only needs to be refrigerated.

I’m a reasonably happy camper. I don’t trust the Pfizer shit because it’s an mRNA mixture. I just have an aversion to being injected with a new and still experimental liquid. No one knows the long term or even medium term side effects of something that plays around with the immune system. The Oxford one is a bog-standard old fashioned vaccine and I have no problem with that.

So if my turn arrives before the Oxford one is available, I shall politely step to one side and let others have my shot. I shall continue to let others jump the queue until the Oxford one arrives.

I’m nothing if not magnanimous.