Photo: One in two-hundred and fifty thousand risk...

A good friend of mine told me there is a one in two-hundred and fifty thousand risk of a blood clot from the Astra-Zeneca vaccine. Whereas, he explained, the odds of being hit by a meteorite are one in forty-thousand - the same as flipping a coin the correct way forty times in succession. He figured that getting the vaccine might be safer than walking across an empty street with a fiery streak unexpectedly lighting up the nighttime sky. The next day, my friend was hit by a meteorite.

Not in the physical sense of course, the meteor rock didn't alter its ten-zillion years of circling around the sun to take specific aim at my friends head, what happened was he suffered a heart attack hours after taking the Zeneca vaccine. Worse, my friend didn't even want the jab, he was marched kicking and shouting to the virus inoculation centre without an appointment by his overly-anxious wife. I suppose you might describe this as a 'proverbial' meteorite, the one with odds of two-hundred and fifty thousand.

I tell you this because, whilst he received tons of get well messages when lying desperately ill in his hospital ward, I contacted him asking if he could perhaps suggest the six numbers necessary for the coming weeks euro lottery. My friend happily obliged - and I nearly won one-hundred and thirty-six million euros. I didn't quite win - two of the numbers weren't right - but four out of the six isn't bad, in fact, I'd say it's pretty good, I've never before had more than one correct number.

You might ask why I'm writing this rubbish, this nonsense about my friend who got the Oxford vaccine then suffered the one in either forty-thousand or two-hundred and fifty thousand odds depending upon which way your view of odds goes. Well, I got into thinking about the whole game of chance, partly because we're in virus lockdown in England with nothing to do and, also, because I'm right now feeling lucky that Sänna recently survived her near disastrous sinking by the skin of her hull. At the time, when frantic phone calls were being made in the middle of the night to and from Panama, I felt desperately unlucky, in fact nearly suicidal. Now, after the event, with Sänna safely hauled from the water, I feel massively lucky, lucky that she is safe. But have no doubt, this game of risk and chance is a murky obscure world of shadowy dark-cloaked pinstripe-suited experts with slide-rules and calculators - mathematical types who tell you if you might one day get lucky or unlucky.

My friend, he now considers himself exceptionally lucky too, he survived his heart attack and the twice-cancelled emergency operation that saved his life. Not so the unvaccinated guy who arrived by emergency ambulance from the West Midlands that necessitated the first cancellation of my friends surgical operation. The man tested negative for covid upon arrival - but positive five days later, the day before he died. And the three unvaccinated guys who shared my friends recovery ward - two of those died from covid too.

My friend tells me how lucky he was to be forcibly given the Zeneca vaccine, saying that being hit by a meteorite saved his life. He didn't know he had heart disease. I told him how unlucky we both were not to win the lottery's top prize, that technically he would have been entitled to one-sixth and a bit based upon current slide-rule mathematics and theoretical chance-luck calculations. My friend, he then got thirty-two and one-third percent sad.

I reckon it's your call on the Oxford-Zeneca vaccine, getting any of the vaccines might almost certainly save your life. If not then don't cross the empty road at night - not when meteors all of a sudden light up the proverbial nighttime sky.

Get the vaccine, any damn vaccine you can - deep down you know it might make sense.
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