Last week, I blogged about the upcoming new Covid battle between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. The voices in this debate are getting louder as Delta ravages the world, even in our compliant Little Red Dot.
As the privileged countries debate on this, many others with no supply of vaccines try their best not to catch the virus and stay alive. The percentage of vaccinated people are slowly growing bigger and overwhelming the unvaccinated. Aggressive pushes by the authorities have met with stiff resistance from the hardcore anti-vaxxers.
I try to listen to both sides of the coin to better understand their concerns and hesitations to get the vaccine and Clubhouse chat groups are a good listening ground. My conclusion remains the same. Other than valid medical reasons, the non-vaccinated are still swamped by misinformation against factual scientific results and deep personal selfishness.
Let me expand on this. Results to date have shown that almost all deaths and hospitalization from Delta belong to the unvaccinated. This is not like a common cold. Between staying alive and dying, what would a rational person choose? Many doctors have shared that patients in ICU are finally convinced that they should have the vaccine but they have to inform the patient that it’s too late to take it.
Then there is the argument that one does not know the long term effects of the vaccine. Hello? We have been taking many different types of vaccines since we were born – chickenpox, flu etc. It is a way of life to protect us and eradicate virus strains permanently. If you die from Covid now, what does it matter how your concerns for the long term vaccine after-effects will be? These people are really not thinking straight and weighing the pros and cons of taking the vaccine logically. Do you really need the death of a family member from the virus to finally convince you to take the vaccine?
The selfishness angle is also vomit-inducing. Non-vaccinated people can effectively pass it on to higher risk groups like their elderly parents or kids below 12 who are not allowed to take the vaccine at the moment. You only think about yourself and not about how your inactions can affect the community at large. If you promise to stay in your house and never go out again, then maybe you can have the right not to get vaccinated. Fair?
Many are now questioning the reasons for the on and off again lockdowns and their impact on businesses. If vaccination is the solution, why is everyone being punished for the actions of the minority now? Shouldn’t there be different standards and limitations for both groups? The non-vaccinated should have restrictions to their movements, get tested regularly and be forced to wear masks everywhere at the minimum.
Anti-vaxxers first complain about wearing masks that restrict their first amendment rights, then say “my body, my rights”. Yet they are now becoming the problem. The virus refuses to go away because of the action of this group. Science and factual evidence are presented to them but yet they cling on to old news and conspiracies.
Should we just leave them alone and let them experience it the hard way when they get COVID? Yes, but their inaction will still affect all of us. Their movements should therefore be severely restricted as a precondition to them holding out against the vaccine. That seems like a fair and reasonable tradeoff, no? The world is slowly coming around to the realization that a certain group is preventing the rest from getting back to normalcy.
S’pore, via the latest lockdown because of the fishery port clusters, is doing its last aggressive push to get as many vaccinated as possible. Hopefully, by the end of Aug, we should have more than 75% of the population vaccinated. The pandemic to endemic strategy can then be executed. The relaxation of the previous restrictions can also then be implemented. We should see more signs of this by mid-Aug. Our long term economic survival as a country is at stake.
The latest lockdown has again claimed more business victims. I see at least 2 coffee shops shut down for good in my neighbourhood over the last 2 weeks. They have probably given up and ran out of cashflows with multiple stop-start restrictions which made the business untenable. They have thrown in the towel.
Yes, you have the right to not take the vaccine based on your rights and beliefs. BUT you do not have the right to punish the rest of the community and to infect the vulnerable with your selfish thinking. We will treat you like the pariah that you will become, so that the rest of us can go on living a life we used to know again. That is a fair tradeoff.
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