It makes sense to be vaccinated

DR ERROL N BENJAMIN

WITHOUT being overly presumptuous, it may be useful to some to understand my conversion from being anti-vaxx to becoming pro-vaxx. At first I was sceptical about the vaccine, for in understanding how vaccines of the past became legitimate by years of trials, I doubted whether this could be said about the covid19 vaccines, which had emerged out of a dire emergency without the years of trials associated with the now accepted vaccines, such as those for polio, measles et al.

And this scepticism would have been fuelled by the emerging anti-vaxx stance, possibly out of a sense of the same “trial” deficiency of the covid19 which kept me at bay, together with the mass propaganda about the unsavoury ingedients of the vaccines, human and animal, which many hesitated to have injected into their bodies. So much so that I found myself an ardent anti-vaxxer ready to message anyone about the perceived problems associated with the vaccines.

But then the tide would turn for me, not out of a whim, but by a fairly critical examination of the covid19 problem as it was being handled, with deaths in the double digits and infections equally alarming in the hundreds. And with no credible communications system of how the individual can attempt to combat this deadly virus, case in point being the need to fortify the immune system through appropriate measures, inter alia. Or any information, after hospitalisation, about any plausible treatment cycle that could assist progression out of the cycle of infection leading to possible death.

In this situation of such dire uncertainty of how covid19 was being dealt with, I was caught in the psychological trauma of feeling that contracting covid19 was just one step away with no informed means of staving it off, which was cogent enough to force me into weighing my options. Either believing all the anti-vaxx propaganda which was swamping the media and that persuasively so, or taking the risk of being vaccinated with all its perceived negativities, thus arming myself with some form of protection against hospitalisation, which in the prevailing circumstance seemed a virtual death sentence.

So here I am with the two shots of Sinopharm in my system, not traumatised as before by any feeling of having contracted covid19 with every normal cough or sneeze that comes my way. This feeling of security with the vaccine in me is by no means complete but at least I can begin to live again, all in the hope that my choice of taking the vaccine was justified.

And I feel comforted further by the rational conclusion that without the necessary trials and necessary duration, no one, and I mean no one, can articulate with any certainty on any “proven” fact about covid19. At best the “fact” or the “truth” they speak about can only be “relative,” awaiting further data and consequent adjustment, and as such can only be “speculative.” And this includes some medical personnel who keep advising the public about the “absolute facts” of covid19 when these can only be “insights” subject to change.

And the less one says of some TV and radio presenters in this regard, the better. For in their pursuit of sensationalism, they often portray propaganda as truth to their gullible audiences. And not understanding the politics of vaccine status, West against China and Russia and Cuba, and the economics of its marketing, playing down some and elevating others for better sales, they merely mimic all the negatives spewed by the anti-vaxxers and propagandists, thereby misleading a public already in a state of confusion of the merits and demerits of vaccines.

Covid19 is new to the world and we can understand the helter-skelter picture being painted in every corner, but with all this confusion you can reduce this to a very personal level, as I did, thinking about your own survival and the things you need to avoid to become a victim and the things you need to do to survive. Like not being careless about all the protocols about masks, sanitisation and physical distancing – and, critically, to take any one of the vaccines available to you.