Anti-Vax

I had a lady friend who had breast cancer. Generally, the prescribed treatment is to surgically remove the tumour and then followed by a course of chemotherapy. I've read from numerous medical literatures that survival rate is quite high if the cancer is detected early and medical intervention is quick enough. My friend opted to remove the tumour, but not the chemo. Apparently she had read somewhere that chemo has many side effects and may be detrimental to the body in the long run. I'm sure there must be some truth in that.

A few years later, the cancer came back, and this time it was much more aggressive. Her condition deteriorated quickly, and then in the end, she opted for the chemo anyway. She died a little over half a year ago. I felt that she could have lived at least a few years longer had she opted for the chemo sooner than she did.

Many people see the human body like machines, probably within the same category as motor vehicles. But actually they are not the same. When a vehicle goes dead, there is always something that the mechanic can do to bring it back to life. Perhaps change of parts and then tweaking here and there. If necessary, he can also make some modifications to the vehicle, and then in the vast majority of cases, it can be brought back to life. The only question is whether it is economically viable to do it. But the human body is different, when you are dead, that's the end of it.

It has been said that Sabah has the lowest number of registrations for the Covid-19 vaccines. I have spoken to a fair number of people who have not registered, and the most common reason was because the vaccines are all too new and may have some serious side effects in the long run. Apart from that, we also have many, many WhatsApp messages giving numerous possible serious repercussions from taking the vaccines. These range from blood clots, cardiac arrest and many others that will eventually lead to death.

Now I'd reckon that roughly about 80% to 90% of the population are gullible to WhatsApp pranks. They just never learn. Whenever they get such messages, they believe without checking. I'm not sure if this is because of laziness to check, or because it's much easier to simply believe; or maybe a bit of both. Never mind if they don't check, but they don't even think to reason out the messages in a logical or scientific way. So in the end, they chose not to register for the vaccines.

I'm thinking that even if it's true that there will be side effects in the long run from taking the vaccines, I'd take my chances and hope for the best. For my immediate concern is to stay alive, at least long enough to ride out the storm, and then later, I hope medical science will figure out something on how to deal with the side effects, whatever they may be. Ultimately, I want to try my best to remain alive to fight another day. If I'm dead from Covid-19 today, I have nothing left to fight for tomorrow.

However, I suspect that if those who did not register for the vaccines do get infected with the Covid-19 virus and become seriously ill and knocking at death's door in the ICU, they would readily submit to the vaccines. All those fears of side effects will be thrown out of the window. For in the end, the survival instinct will always prevail over others, because as I said earlier, when you're dead, that's the end of it, there is no coming back. I just wonder if it would be too late to ask for the vaccine then.

I'm glad to note that recently there's a surge in the number of people who've registered for the vaccines in Sabah and now stands at about 35.9%. That's a huge improvement from just a month or two ago which was just around 10%. Perhaps that's because many of the fence sitters have realised that none of the vaccine recipients have died so far or at least if there were deaths, they were not caused by the vaccines; and as far as I know, no blood clots incidence have been reported yet. I'm guessing that many people have now realised that the only hope of beating the virus is by achieving herd immunity through vaccinations.

But 35.9% is still not good enough. I'm hoping to see that figure rise to at least 80% as soon as possible. I'm not hoping for 100% because I'm a realistic person; I realise that there will always be people whom are the so-called anti-vax.