A LOCAL woman who received the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine recently says she is unconcerned by the potential side effects of the jab.
Country music journalist and photographer, and regular Murray Pioneer columnist, Robyn McIntosh received her first dose of the vaccine at the Renmark Medical Clinic on April 1.
“I thought it was an April Fools’ Day trick because I didn’t even feel them putting the needle in,” she said.
“I wasn’t worried about side effects. If it made me crook, it made me crook.”
Ms McIntosh said she felt fine in the days after receiving the vaccine.
“I got the vaccine on the Thursday and I was fine to go along to the speedway that weekend,” she said.
“I didn’t have any side effects and I don’t even know what a blood clot feels like because I’ve never had one.”
Ms McIntosh said she was booked in for three immunisations: the first dose of the COVID vaccine, followed two weeks later by the flu vaccine and, after more than two months, a second COVID jab.
“The COVID vaccine was at the Renmark Hospital and the flu vaccine was at the medical centre,” she said.
Ms McIntosh said she was motivated to get immunised by the potential for a ‘vaccination passport’ or similar system for restricting access to public activities and events for unvaccinated people.
“There’s going to be some kind of restraints (for people who don’t get it) because it would mean I couldn’t go to the speedway unless I have it, or to the theatre – this is what I can see happening,” she said.
“So I just said ‘If you’ve got to have it, you’ve got to have it’.”
Ms McIntosh said she would “probably” recommend others be vaccinated.
“I would tell them I’ve had mine and I’m fine and I think about all the things you could be restricted from doing,” she said.
“Our lives have all changed, and I don’t ever see it going back to what it used to be. It will always be sanitiser on you all the time and using the codes to get into places.
“(The vaccine) didn’t have an effect of me, but I have heard of other people who have had a problem, so I can’t really recommend it 100 per cent because of that.
“But from my experience with the first one it was all good.”