Well we have finally made it to December 2020. I think for most of us this is a year we will all remember but not for a good reason. You will all be able to tell your descendants what you did in the plague year of 2020 though we hope it does not end up like the plague year of 1665 which ended up with the Great fire of London. We hope that the next year will be more hopeful and we can return to some activities we have not managed this year including meeting together at our Annual Meeting. To give the maximum time for this to be allowed to happen the BNMS Council has decided to swap the 1 day meeting from autumn to spring and the long meeting from spring to autumn. The team at the Royal Free in London, stars of the BBC series “Hospital” have offered to organise a one day virtual meeting in May. This will include the 2020 Young Investigator’s prize as its highlight and the BNMS AGM. The present plan will be for the 3 day meeting to be held at the end of September as a face to face meeting and have our annual dinner and prize giving.

Anyway this December many things will happen 3000 residents of the United Kingdom will attend their local Emergency Departments with Christmas decoration based injuries and sadly 15 people will die of electrocution from Christmas tree lights. Why do I mention this? Well despite these figures most of us who celebrate Christmas will still put up decorations and put electric lights on our Christmas trees. So we all make a risk assessment and decide that the risk of significant harm is outweighed by the enjoyment our decorations and lights give us and our families.

This will be the same with the coronavirus vaccine. There will be a very few people who should not have a vaccination for medical reasons but for the vast majority of us it will be a brilliant idea which may not only save our lives but the lives of those around us.  I can understand some of the public’s concerns especially in respect of the British public’s very poor understanding of science and risk but what has distressed me are a few members of this Society who have used social media to spread disinformation concerning vaccines in general and the coronavirus vaccine In particular.

What is true is that no human activity is without risk, most of us will die in bed so the biggest thing we can do to avoid the biggest risk we face is never to go to bed. This is clearly ridiculous and as nuclear medicine people we know in particular there is no such thing as a 100% safe level of radioactivity. However, we all know the risk of a patient coming to harm from the radiopharmaceutical injection is tiny compared to the risk of not having the test and dying from an undiagnosed and treated medical condition. Some armchair observers state that how can we know a vaccine is safe when it has only been given to 10,000 subjects to look at its safety. Here I will let you into a massive secret which I can tell you from my role in assessing the safety of new medicines for the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The secret is that before being approved a diagnostic radiopharmaceutical will have its safety assessed in only about 250 subjects and a therapeutic radiopharmaceutical in only about 1000 patients. Does this stop us giving these products to our patients or would it stop you having a nuclear medicine test yourself? The families of the 70,000 people who have died directly or indirectly from COVID and those suffering from long COVID will all tell you getting the virus is not risk free. So when you are offered one of the coronavirus vaccinations I really suggest you get yourself vaccinated for your sake, your family’s sake and your patient’s sake.

If you celebrate Christmas have a very merry one, if you do not celebrate Christmas have a few good, well deserved days off and for us all to have a happy and healthy 2021.

Dr John Buscombe

BNMS President