This little nip won’t make you immortal but may extend your life considerably.
Of all the COVID vaccine incentive schemes we’ve seen, this is our favourite.
The people running Castle Bran in Brasov county, Transylvania, are offering free entry to the tourist attraction along with a free COVID vaccine, according to Reuters.
“The idea was to show how people got jabbed 500-600 years ago in Europe,” says marketing director Alexander Priscu, who clearly loves his job selling the tenuous vampire connections of this very pretty castle.
As a big Dracula fan, your Back Page correspondent has visited and can attest that it is adorable. Far from being the inspiration for the creepy, crumbling dwelling visited by Jonathan Harker, Bran is a European fairytale castle straight out of Disney.
Ok, it has a lot of medieval torture equipment on display to improve the ambience, but really it was a sort of toll-station that never saw a lot of action, and almost certainly was never visited by that Voivode of Wallachia, Vlad III Dracula (who himself is only speculatively connected to Bram Stoker’s Count).
But who cares?
Visitors now instead of paying a toll can get punctured for free with a life-prolonging substance, by staff wearing cute fang stickers.
Romania has had a million COVID cases to date and about 30,000 deaths.
If you see something neat, say something neat … send biomedically plausible horror fiction to felicity@medicalrepublic.com.au.
