SALISBURY, England – On a recent Saturday afternoon, Margaret Drabble, 83, sits under the rising arches of Salisbury Cathedral, swinging her legs back and forth under her chair like a schoolgirl.
Minutes earlier, in a hut near the cathedral entrance, she had received her first shot of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against the coronavirus. But that was not why she looked so happy, she said. Instead, it was some of the elaborate organ music that resounded inside the cathedral.
“Oh, I just love the organ,” said Drabble, a former schoolteacher. “It’s so beautiful it almost makes me cry every time I hear it.”
“I always wanted to play it,” she said sadly. Then she looked at the organ’s 4,000 pipes in front of the cathedral and sat up to listen. She was told to sit for 15 minutes to make sure she did not get an allergic reaction.
Britain is in the midst of a mass vaccination, rushing to exceed the spread of the virus as a new variant is discovered in the country’s boom. To date, about 6.3 million people have received a first dose, just under 10 percent of the population.
England’s national health service has signed contracts with dozens of large venues that will serve as vaccination centers. On Monday, it announced 33 new locations, including an Oxford football stadium, several sports centers and a concert venue.
Patients have been receiving the vaccine at Salisbury Cathedral since January 16, and it provides the vaccination twice a week for about 1,200 people a day. Sessions last about 12 hours, and most of the time David Halls and John Challenger, the cathedral’s organists, provide a musical background, ranging from well-known hymns to fairgrounds and euphoric classical works.
This makes the cathedral one of the few places in the country where one can currently hear live music. As large parts of Britain have been closed for the third time under lock-in, theaters, museums and concert halls have been forced to close. But in recent weeks, the British government’s race to vaccinate the population has offered a surprising way of life to some cultural sites.
Some – such as the Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds, in the north of England and the Hertford Theater, just north of London – have become vaccination centers and made use of their large, well-ventilated spaces and crowd management experience. Visitors are now queuing up to receive shots, instead of watching showcases or singing along to musicals.
According to local officials, at least one well-known London attraction, the Science Museum, is being considered and even circus operators have presented their grand peaks.
Salisbury Cathedral is, of course, more of a religious place than a cultural place. But beyond the organ accompaniment, anyone who is grafted into the 13th-century Gothic building in the south-west of England can also marvel at its architecture and reflect on various sites throughout the site, including a large light figure by sculptor Henry Moore and a tapestry by the contemporary British artist. Grayson Perry.
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Answers to your vaccine questions
Although the exact order of vaccine recipients may vary by state, medical workers and residents of long-term care institutions are likely to be first. If you want to understand how this decision is made, this article will help.
Life will only become normal when society as a whole gets enough protection against the coronavirus. Once countries approve a vaccine, they will be able to vaccinate at most a few percent of their citizens in the first few months. The unvaccinated majority will still be vulnerable to infection. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines offer strong protection against disease. But it is also possible for people to spread the virus without even knowing they are infected, because they experience only mild symptoms or not at all. Scientists do not yet know whether the vaccination also blocks the transmission of the coronavirus. For now, even vaccinated people will have to wear masks, crowds inside, and so on. Must avoid. Once enough people are vaccinated, it will be very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people who can become infected. Depending on how quickly we as a society reach the goal, life may begin by the fall of 2021 to approach something as normal.
Yes, but not forever. The two vaccines that may be approved this month clearly protect people against Covid-19. However, the clinical trials that have yielded these results have not been designed to determine whether people who have been vaccinated can still spread the coronavirus without developing symptoms. It remains a possibility. We know that people who are naturally infected by the coronavirus can spread it while experiencing no cough or other symptoms. Researchers will study this question intensively as the vaccines begin. Meanwhile, even vaccinated people will have to think of themselves as possible distributors.
The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is delivered like a shot in the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection will not be different from what you received before. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccinations, and none of them have reported serious health problems. But some of them felt transient discomfort, including pains and flu-like symptoms that usually last a day. It is possible that people after the second shot may be planning to take a day off from work or school. Although these experiences are not pleasant, it is a good sign: it is the result of your own immune system encountering the vaccine and getting a powerful response that will provide long-lasting immunity.
No. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use a genetic molecule to replenish the immune system. That molecule, known as mRNA, is eventually destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse with a cell so that the molecule can slide. The cell uses the mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which can stimulate the immune system. Each of our cells can contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules at any one time that they produce to make their own proteins. Once those proteins are made, our cells cut the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules that make up our cells can only survive for a few minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is designed to resist the cells’ enzymes a little longer, allowing the cells to make extra viral proteins and trigger a stronger immune response. But the mRNA can only take a few days at most before being destroyed.
On Saturday, few visitors watched it, but several listened attentively to the music.
“I live locally, and we all said, ‘Have you been to the organ?’ “Said Pam Scoop, 86.” We are not saying, “Have you ever been to a jab?” ‘She adds, which uses a British term for a shot. She then closed her eyes to listen to Halls play the uplifting Bach chorus “Jesus, Joy of Man’s Desiring”.
Nicholas Papadopulos, dean of the cathedral, said he offered the building as a vaccination center as soon as he heard that a successful shot had been developed. “We think there were a lot of elderly, vulnerable people who have not been out of their homes very much in the past year,” he would have said, wanting to create an environment that is welcoming and reassuring and soothing. ”
“The obvious solution was to make music,” he said.
David Halls, the cathedral’s music director, said he started playing famous classical pieces from people like Bach, Mozart and Handel. He said he then decided to play departure, such as ‘Old Man River’ and English hits such as ‘I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside’, in the hope that they would evoke happy memories among older listeners.
“The expression ‘smooth classic’ was what came to mind,” Halls said. “We did not want anything too prickly or unpleasant or anything too quick.”
John Challenger, the cathedral’s assistant music director, said some locals had started sending requests by email. Someone suggested a work by Australian organist and composer George Thalben-Ball, he said; On Saturday, someone else emailed to ask for a piece by Olivier Messiaen, including the time they would like the work to be played.
“It’s weird what people want, isn’t it?” Challenger said.
Dan Henderson, one of the doctors supervising the center, said the cathedral is a perfect space for vaccinations, as the large, boring space reduces the risk of catching the virus. The music was a bonus, he added, but it had a medical benefit because it reduced people’s anxiety. “It changes it from a medical procedure to an event,” he said, “and it really makes patients feel at ease.”
There was only one, occasional downside, he added. ‘We sat patients in the observation area for half an hour and listened to the music while they only had to be there for 15 minutes. “Sometimes it actually impedes the flow of patients,” Henderson said. “But I think it’s quite a wonderful problem.”
Many visitors this past Saturday apparently had the urge to hold on and enjoy the music. Sue Phillips, 77, was sitting in the waiting area with her husband William after receiving a shot. The organists took a breather, and she seemed disappointed by the silence.
“It would be great if the organ played,” Phillips said. ‘All these old people, including us, have been robbed of culture, music and beauty for a year. Then we get the chance to get organ music. ‘
But soon after, the organ came to life and the familiar notes of Hubert Parry’s ‘Jerusalem’, a patriotic English hymn, filled the space.
Phillips’ eyes brightened above her mask. “Oh, wonderful!” she said. “It’s magical.”
When she looked at her husband, she said, “I think we’ll stay another ten minutes.”