‘Would you hire a plumber to make decisions about your electrical problems at home, or a carpenter to fix your air-conditioning unit, and vice versa? We need common sense and safety, not dangerous political correctness.’
A NEW recommendation from the US-CDC is in the offing: A booster shot with a reformulated COVID-19 vaccine, engineered to cover the deadlier Delta strain from India and other variants to prevent breakthrough infections. Before we discuss that issue, allow me to delve deeper into the serious matter of people’s vaccine hesitancy. This is a vital factor, one that will determine how soon we will achieve herd immunity as a society and end the pandemic, or whether a new pandemic of deadlier variants (God forbid, COVID-22, etc.) will result from people’s refusal to be vaccinated. So far, less than 55 percent in the USA are vaccinated.
We have to be compassionate with people who are fearful of the side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, but not with those misguided political anti-vaxer agitators, who are wrongly invoking civil rights and freedom to do what they want regardless of the danger to lives of millions, including the vaccinated.
Obviously, most of the people who reject the vaccines are ignorant of the accurate medical facts. The wrong notion has now led to new surges (the worst yet) in the infection rates and rising deaths (which are preventable) among the unvaccinated around the country and in the world. Hospitalization has catapulted to new heights and massive numbers of elective (non-emergency) surgeries had to be cancelled (a great complex logistic inconvenience) to provide spaces for COVID-19 patients. The economic, social, and mental, impact of vaccine hesitancy is ravaging every nation. People who are fearful of the vaccines have to be educated with scientific facts to counter the harmful inaccuracies and dangerous lies circulating around.
Last Sunday, August 8, 2021, in the USA, there were more than 36,000 new cases and a 7-day average of 110,360 deaths. Florida, where the governor was arguing against a masking and social distancing mandate, had the worst data: 22,783 cases and 199 deaths in one day, the highest in the nation. This is to be expected. Another proof that masks and social distancing are a must in our fight against viruses, especially this more virulent Delta variant, the predominant (90+ percent) killer today.
Politicians and civil rights activists chanting we must leave the decision to parents (re: vaccination, masking, distancing) are most dangerously wrong, unless parents are epidemiologists or experts in infectious diseases. For the prevention and management of illnesses, we must listen to medical science and leave the recommendation to experts in the field, not to politicians or any non-medical people. Would you hire a plumber to make decisions about your electrical problems at home, or a carpenter to fix your air-conditioning unit, and vice versa? We need common sense and safety, not dangerous political correctness.
Those refusing the vaccines (around 60 million in the US as of last month), who believe they are right, are misguided and are serving as a huge reservoir-host to this deadly virus, which will continue to rapidly mutate to a more transmissible and deadlier strain. If not stopped, the mutation could create an ultimate killer variant that would no longer respond to vaccines or any drugs, an apocalyptic possibility, God forbid. Without a warm body host, viruses are inactivated, unable to replicate, and eventually self-destruct.
This 20 percent anti-vaccine individuals should realize that the 4.4 billion people around the world and the 166 million, or 50.7 percent, of the US population who had the vaccination, are doing well. These massive statistics are evidence-based data that prove, beyond any reasonable doubt, that these vaccines are safe and effective in preventing SARS-CoV2 infections and premature deaths.
Those who are refusing the vaccines during any pandemic, harboring and enabling the virus to thrive, multiply, and mutate in their body, and then spreading the deadlier strains to others, albeit unintentionally, are nonetheless guilty of intentional (refusal to get the vaccine) negligence, contributing to public endangerment. The end-result of intentionally spraying bullets around or ignorantly spraying a deadly virus to other people is no different: massive bodily injury and death, medical consequences that are real and devastating.
More than 90 percent of the recent surges in COVID-19 infections and deaths involved unvaccinated people (many of them are younger, including children) and mostly due to the Delta variant. Vaccinated people are highly protected, with a small number of breakthrough infections with milder symptoms. Those previously infected who received the vaccine were found to be doubly protected, as their antibodies doubled.
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Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, a Cardiac Surgeon Emeritus based in Northwest Indiana and Las Vegas, Nevada, is an international medical lecturer/author, a Health Advocate, and Chairman of the Filipino United Network-USA, a 501(c)3 humanitarian foundation in the United States. Websites: FUN8888.com, today.SPSAtoday.com, and philipSchua.com Email: scalpelpen@gmail.com
