Many people are understandably anxious about being pushed to take the COVID – 19 – either in their workplace – where you stand to lose your work if you don’t take the COVID – 19 vaccine, or by pressure from others. On the other hand, you face taking something into your body that you don’t want. This is a very high threat and goes about issues of safety.
It feels wrong that control is being taken away from you especially around consent to do with your own body. If you don’t take the vaccine, you could lose your job and you also lose certain freedoms – cant go to clubs, restaurants, indoor meetings, you could lose friends who don’t agree with you. This is all very threatening.
When a person is threatened, one response is to withdraw. You become even more socially isolated which is terrible, especially in this time of stress. It causes depression because you don’t want to be around or work with people who don’t respect your boundaries or your feelings. All day long you are bombarded with people insisting you are wrong.
This is especially difficult after the news that AstraZeneca vaccine caused deaths. Even though the number of deaths were low, those people that died, were often young and would probably not have died of COVID. This makes the threat even higher. Why should you trust the pharmacy companies when one vaccine caused harm and we don’t have the long term outcomes of the other vaccines?
Most people would want more time to see what the long term outcomes are for COVID vaccines. Most people are sensibly wanting to wait it out. This vaccine came out really quickly – far quicker than any other vaccine and any other drug. No wonder we’re scared.
The news reports on any deaths related to vaccine are even more frightening, and many people feel they are being lied to about safety of the vaccine.
The Problem: We have never faced this situation before in our lifetimes. It’s been hundreds years since the Bubonic plague and 1918 was the last devastating flu epidemic that wiped out millions of people. In 1918, 500 Million people died of the flu virus and 1/3 of the population was infected.
Currently on worldometer.com there are over 217 million people infected with COVID-19 – although the cases in some parts of the world are very much under-reported. So far over 4 million and a half people have died of COVID, this does not include the number of people who couldn’t get proper care because the hospitals were overloaded, patients couldn’t be seen by doctors in time, cancers and other diseases have had late diagnoses. People are dying of poverty because they are losing jobs. These are only some of the consequences of the pandemic.
Lets look at that . The longer we wait to become fully immunized, the more harm is being done. The instinct is to believe our immune systems can cope, and, more often than not, you are right. Most people who get COVID have not died. Some don’t even know they had it. But – this is a big BUT. The virus has changed and with each new mutation it seems more aggressive. 6 times as many people in their 50s and 60s are dying from COVID than last year.
The longer COVID hangs around, the more dangerous it is becoming because it seems to be mutating and becoming stronger, more aggressive, more dangerous.
If vulnerable people have been vaccinated, why should I vaccinate? Good question. Great question actually. Many vulnerable people, the aged, those with cancer, those taking chemotherapy for cancer or rheumatoid arthritis, or other diseases, they don’t build enough immunity even if they take the vaccine.
Most people, if you take the vaccine, if you get COVID, which you can, your disease will be mild. But these vulnerable people, they don’t build immunity, and they can die even if they are vaccinated. If you are vaccinated, you can still carry the vaccine, but the more people who become vaccinated, the less infections we’ll have and the less spread.
Also, the more people who are vaccinated, the less we will fill the hospitals and ICUS and the less people will die because they didn’t have access to care.
Hundreds of millions of people are getting vaccinated in the developed countries. If we can win this war against COVID in the developed countries then we can vaccinate the rest the world who can’t afford it.
Freedom: There were many of us who chose to have the vaccine, even though we were terrified, even though we took the vaccine not for ourselves, but to protect others. We took the medicine to protect our loved ones and other vulnerable people. Don’t we have the right to protect ourselves then from people who chose to remain unvaccinated? Don’t we have the right not to want to associate with people who aren’t taking the risks we took for others.
I didn’t want the vaccine. I took the vaccine because I wanted to protect my patients. Many of my patients, young patients, didn’t want to take the vaccine. They took it to protect their grandparents and diabetic and other vulnerable family members.
It is your choice not to have the vaccine. But it is also the choice of employers and other employees to protect themselves from unvaccinated people.
In this battle against COVID, you can’t stand on the sidelines. You have to choose. Yourself or others.
YOURSELF OR OTHERS?
All the best
Judy