We should start a Bafta for most patient TV hosts. Unvaccinated is a documentary that requires a near-saintly level of tolerance just to watch and Prof Hannah Fry needs some reward for it.
A group of Britons who have chosen not to receive a Covid vaccine are gathered by Fry in order to better understand them. Since nobody actually moves in, the only consequence of this is that Fry has a series of debates in rooms that look bad.
According to a survey conducted for the programme, a high number of vaccine refuseniks fear minor side-effects such as headaches or sore arms, which is surprising. Fry said that if you go for an injection expecting an adverse reaction, it could cause you to believe you are suffering from one afterwards, inflating the figures. People who don't know they have been jabbed frequently insist they have side effects.
Before Fry has finished, Vicky, 43, from Cambridge, who bills herself as "strongly opinionated", steams in, loudly observing that heart inflammation is a side-effect of the Covid jab that can't be faked.
In the past two and half years, we have all come across a Vicky, online if not in person, but it feels awkward to watch the normal protocols of friendly, rational BBC science programming being shattered; Fry looks surprised that someone would just ride roughshod over an argument they clearly haven chanelle feels moved to intervene on Fry's behalf
She puts 20 jelly beans on the table for the group to eat. Someone gets a bad one out of the 20. It's unlucky. You would need 33,000 beans on the table to make up for the chance of getting myocarditis, according to Fry. "thousands of people have died from or been injured by Covid jabs, and storms out", according to the illustration.
It becomes a useful compendium of misunderstandings as the program goes on. Pfizer's published list of potential or rare side-effects has been mistaken for a list of symptoms commonly experienced, and the practice of constantly re-testing vaccines has been mistaken for a situation where the public are subjected to experimental, untested medicines. Fry doesn't like the idea of correlation without causality, and he doesn't like the idea of strong evidence that the jab is safe.
This myth is going to start hitting home eventually. Unvaccinated is not a one-way process of game rationality chipping away at hard beliefs. Even if the views themselves are wacky, we can empathise with where they came from. Luca, for example, a man who lives alone and spends a lot of time on Facebook, may be wrong to think Covid vaccines have microchips in them that will kill you once your local 5G transmitter is switched on, but his start point is disgust at big pharma's profit
Chanelle bridled at her inability to keep an open mind. As a pregnant black woman with a keen knowledge of her community's history, Chanelle is aware that the medical establishment has not served her well. I didn't understand why she wasn't swayed by statistics on the dangers to a baby of Covid infections, lined up against the minuscule risk from the vaccine, being one of many scenes where there sadly isn't time to properly question a participant's viewpoint
Two months after their initial intense week together, Fry is back with the seven volunteers at a vaccination center, where she asks them if they will now go for a jab. This doesn't work out. The sceptics have been guided a little closer to the light.
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