Over 15 million people in the UK have had their first COVID-19 vaccine. Starting with the elderly and frontline care workers, the UK government is now rolling out the vaccines to further at-risk groups, and in doing so they're beginning to offer them to more vulnerable people. One group included in this is people with higher body mass indexes (BMI), due to higher risk of serious illness.
Journalist Liam Thorpe of the Liverpool Echo was surprised to see that he had been offered a vaccine appointment, given that he's healthy and far too young to be offered the jab yet.
"Obviously I'm not going to turn it down," he wrote on Twitter. "No one should – but I am really confused why I would be offered at this stage when many more vulnerable or at-risk groups haven't been."
A day later, still curious as to why he should get a jab so early, he rang up his doctor to confirm. At which point he discovered it was quite an amusing mixup. His records had him as being 6.2 centimeters (2.4 inches) rather than 6 foot 2 inches (187 centimeters), giving him an alarming BMI.
"I mean I've put on a few pounds in lockdown but not that many," Thorpe followed up. "When I told my mum I had been classed in the clinically obese category, she said 'well perhaps this is the wake-up call you need'."
Others suggested that he should have kept it quiet, crouched down a bit and tried his luck, or else slithered in like a snake and asked "Please, my vaccines, I'm so short". Some (OK, me) questioned why the doctors hadn't been in touch with concerns earlier, given they had him down as a 6-centimeters-tall man spread over a wide enough area to give him the BMI of a tank.
To this, he replied they were clearly "just happy to let me live my 6.2cm 17.5 stone best life".
Thorpe added that though he didn't get his vaccine, he felt like he shouldn't have jumped the queue anyway, and was pleased to have a fun story to tell about it, adding, "I think they would have cottoned on when a morbidly obese pancake didn't slither in."
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