Ian McKellen gets COVID vaccination, encourages everyone to follow suit

After a long year, COVID-19 vaccinations are finally beginning, with Gandalf himself near the head of the line.

The world first heard of COVID-19 early this year, and by March it was clear that the pandemic would define 2020 forever. It’s been a long slog — unemployment, disease, death, and isolation — but at least now, at the end of these interminable 12 months, people are finally starting to get vaccinated, and we can rest assured that 2021 will be more enjoyable. How could it not be?

Vaccinations have been underway in the U.K. for days now, with the most vulnerable populations getting them first. That means the elderly, including celebrities like Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies. Speaking to ITV after his first vaccination, he couldn’t stop enthusing about the workers in the National Health Service. “Next time I come, well no, six days after I next come I’m going to give them all a big hug,” he said. “Is that allowed? I don’t know.”

"That’s the real bonus of all this, to watch and see what works in this country and what doesn’t work – and it seems to me the NHS is right at the top of the list for institutions that do work. Of course, I know I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for the NHS. I’m a little bit older than the NHS but when I was a kid, having good medical treatment available when it was needed – what a wonderful notion."

McKellen was also quick to encourage others to get the vaccine once it’s made available to them. “It is invasive of course, it looks like a weapon – a needle – but it isn’t, it’s a friend! I would encourage everybody to do the sensible thing, not just for themselves but for everybody else because if you’re virus-free that helps everybody else, doesn’t it?”

Depending on who you are and what risk factors you exhibit, it may take a while for the vaccine to become available to you, but just knowing it’s coming allows people to at least end 2020 on a note of hope, which has been in too short a supply for too long. And if Ian McKellen is the one to impart that hope, all the better.

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