Why am I not getting vaccinated for COVID-19?
The pressure is mounting. Get vaccinated. Soon there will be travel restrictions only allowing COVID-19 vaccinated people to roam freely, I am told.
I love science—science that I do, not the science that someone else has purportedly done and I am being asked to believe in. Scriptures are to be read from the books, not science. Science is about seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and analyzing the data coming from these experiences.
With that kind of love for science, knowing that each one of us is unique in their body composition, and not believing in general medications, I ask myself what scientific data about COVID-19 I trust. The easiest answer is obvious; I should trust the data that is most relevant to myself: my own body, my own experience with COVID-19. I have over twelve months of this data to review—considering the end of February 2020 to be the start of the global pandemic. In these twelve months this body has traveled nationally and internationally, has met people in groups big and small, and is still free of the feared infection. If by taking small precautions, this body has been able to ward off Corona for 12 months, why should I believe this body will not be able to do so in future too?
A second level of comfort comes from studying the other set of data most relevant to me: the COVID-19 experience of my immediate family members. Parents, both over 80, active, meeting people, going places, are doing fine; siblings with similarly active lifestyles are also doing fine; all cousins are faring well too—the only infection being experienced by a 29-year-old man who ran a fever for a few days but got well within 10 days. Why must this relevant medical history of immediate family members not console me?
The third set of COVID-19 medical data that I trust in, comes from studying the experiences of friends who attended college with me. They were born around the same time I came in this world; they come from social backgrounds like mine. Thanks to a WhatsApp group I am aware of things happening in their lives. Of these 195 people only one person got infected but got well within fifteen days.
My own medical history, the medical histories of my immediate family members and my close friends, tell me to decline getting the COVID-19 vaccination till long term effects of this vaccine have been analyzed. And if there is something deep inside me that makes me susceptible to COVID-19, I am willing to take the risk. I have lived a quirky life that gamblers live and am ready to lose this time.
1 comment:
I have changed my mind, and I am now getting the COVID-19 vaccination. Four considerations have made me reverse my initial decision of not getting the COVID-19 vaccination.
1. If you don't have a COVID-19 vaccination certificate, global travel is going to become a tough deal for you. Without a proof of COVID-19 vaccination, you will be required to take the COVID test before any international flight. In many countries the test is free, but not in several developing states. It now becomes a financial decision: Do you want to spend money and waste time in repeated COVID-19 tests, or get vaccinated and save money and time?
2. Several countries are asking you to stay in quarantine for weeks, when you reach that country EVEN when you have a negative PCR test. When I travel, I move fast, often staying in a country for less than 10 days. I cannot afford to be held in a place just because I am not vaccinated.
3. By today, over 87 million people have been vaccinated in the US. The vaccination is proving to be effective with hardly any side effects.
4. It has been almost a year and a half and we still do not have good medical information about who is at risk. Age and comorbidity regularly show up in COVID-19 medical data, but it is an utter failure of the researchers to not know/publish why some otherwise healthy people get seriously sick with Corona.
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