So you don't want to take the coronavirus vaccine? Here's what you need to know

Imagine, for a moment, that your government is led by a serial liar, an amoral poltroon, and that he got the job after spending years calling you names.

If you're white, the first two apply anyway but you may have to think hard about what it's like to be poor to understand the third one.

If you're black, you don't need to imagine at all.

The poorest and darkest-skinned amongst us die in greater numbers from coronavirus for the exact same reason that they are less likely to be vaccinated: the people issuing the instructions are neither of them, nor for them.

But it's not because, as some are suggesting already, frontline NHS or care home staff don't care. It's not because ethnic minorities are stupid. It's because of conspiracy theorists who REALLY don't care, and ARE very stupid.

So let's take the stupid things you've been told, one at a time, and treat you like a grown-up.

1. The vaccine will change your DNA

Your DNA is a bit like a recipe book, containing all the instructions how to make you. Your cells function when a protein 'reads' these instructions, like a chef. The protein moves along the strand of DNA, creating a copy of it - a bit like shouting the instructions across a kitchen.

This copy, called messenger RNA, then travels to another bit of the cell and makes what it's been told to, like a junior chef. Afterwards, the mRNA breaks down, gets into your blood stream, and is flushed away with everything else you don't need. The original recipe, and the book it's in, don't change at all.

The vaccines all use mRNA to teach your body how to recognise coronavirus if it turns up. They send in a new recipe, telling your immune system what the bug looks like on the outside, so that if it gets into your body they can spot and get rid of it.

It does not alter any of the recipes that make you. It just teaches one bit of your body - the immune system - how to keep you safe, and once that message has been delivered the mRNA breaks down, leaving only that lifesaving instruction behind.

2. The vaccine contains a microchip or nanobots

A microchip is made from metal and includes transistors, resistors, and capacitors to run a small electrical circuit. They're about the size of a grain of rice. It won't fit down a syringe, and it would be easily spotted.

Even if 'they' did put one in you, it's probably not going to give a James Bond-style medical readout and GPS positioning. Millions of pets are microchipped, and all it does is tell a vet the owner's name and address. The government knows your address already.

Nanobots haven't been invented yet. If they had, why would a government spend billions making tiny robots to control your thought processes, when Facebook already exists?

3. The vaccine contains pork or beef

Nope.

4. The vaccine contains aborted foetuses

Nope again. Some of the manufacturing process for the Astra Zeneca jab used cells from a legal abortion, but none of that is in the final vaccine.

5. The vaccine was too quick to be safe

New vaccines have to go through large-scale human trials before approval, to check for adverse reactions and how they work in people of different age, race or gender. ALL these checks were done for the Covid vaccines.

It went quicker than normal for three good reasons. First, the wealthiest governments, pharmaceutical companies, and research institutions in the world threw the kitchen sink at it. Covid became a pandemic and affected the global north, while Ebola, for example, stayed in Africa.

Secondly, those who'd had a test vaccine then have to be exposed to the illness. In the case of Ebola, it would take ages for 20,000 people to come into contact with it. But with coronavirus rampant worldwide, huge numbers in Brazil, Europe and Asia could be exposed within weeks, and the vaccine put to the test.

Finally, because there was such a massive and desperate market for the vaccines, the companies producing them knew they'd sell something. So they had the financial certainty to start production while waiting for the evidence, which meant the jabs were ready as soon as the science supported them.

This vaccine wasn't "too quick". It's just that other vaccines are usually horrifyingly slow. Hopefully, this new method of delivery will mean in future that vaccines will be quicker.

6. The vaccine will affect your fertility

Nope. Reason being, mRNA can't reprogramme your DNA. It cannot stop your cells performing their usual function, whether they are cells in your lungs or in your ovaries. It just helps with the body's housework.

7. The vaccine will be useless because of the new variants

There are concerns that new strains of the virus will mean the vaccines are not as effective against them. But it does protect against the strains we've got now, meaning once vaccinated you're less likely to get ill, go to hospital, or die. So it's still worth having it, even if we may need a booster shot in future.

If a new strain arises and proves to be a threat, that'll be either because the borders are not effectively controlled by a man who LITERALLY got elected after promising to do exactly that, or because he's been so stupid for the past year that the virus was given plenty of room to mutate in.

8. The vaccine is killing people and they're not telling you

It is an indisputable fact that 100% of deaths take place after the victim has been alive for a bit. The government refuses to conduct research on the toxicity of oxygen, but we do know all breaths contain oxygen, all water molecules contain oxygen, and all the Covid patients in hospital are on oxygen. COINCIDENCE, MUCH?

So let's stop breathing, and drinking water, and going to hospitals, and being alive. Once we're all dead, mortality from all causes will drop to zero.

Data on adverse reactions and deaths are published and available. Its shows most reactions are mild - hot flushes, for example, or temporary blurred vision. A death after having had a vaccine is not necessarily due to having one.

You're more likely to die from coronavirus than the vaccine. Therefore, get the vaccine.

9. The vaccine is a form of euthanasia

This is a new one - but there are some communities in firmly of the impression that the vaccines have been tailored to kill you a year later.

Firstly, that's a hell of a scientific development no-one on Earth is aware of. And secondly, they could kill you all NOW if they just let you catch the disease, and it'd be cheaper, too.

In fact, this government is already ending your lives early. The poorest 10% in the UK die a decade sooner than the wealthiest 10%. Smoking, drinking, lack of exercise, obesity, diabetes, poor housing, low wages, poor education are all going to end you sooner, and all require investment by government to reverse. Every day that they don't do it saves cash, and kills you.

Get the vaccine, and you stop some of this unofficial euthanasia.

10. It's all a YUGE conspiracy

You've got to hand it to Bill Gates. He's managed to get the Russians and Americans working together with the Armenians and New Zealanders, to convince a grandma in Newcastle that she should let him put an invisible microchip in her arm so he knows what she watches on telly, and he's done it all armed only with a charitable foundation trying to stop the poorest people in the world from dying.

That nice Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, is innocently allowing that same grandma to be fed a diet of absolute b****cks on a daily basis while harvesting her Facebook data to find out what she watched on telly last night, and sell that on to people who use it to steal her money and her vote, using brainwashing techniques based on her preference for Coronation Street over EastEnders.

There isn't a conspiracy. There's just a lot of people, doing all the normal people things, and those who are trusted the least are trying to tell those who don't trust them the most what to do, which never works.

But thinking always works. So try that, instead.