In many of the countries, the first injection of the vaccine was given to the state’s leader such as the king, prime minister and the president of the nation. That was done to boost the confidence among the subjects to take the vaccines. Netanyahu, Mohammed Bin Salman and Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Makhtum are a few amongst them who even appeared before the media while being administered the vaccines.
In India, the Prime Minister Modi made an announcement with a diametrically opposite news. He said the first 3 crore vaccines will be given to the common man, and that none among the elected political leaders will be given before that. It is aimed at saying that the first preference is for the common man. But then the people want to see the success stories before that. They don’t want the vaccine to be tested on them.
In other parts of the world, some of the other brands of vaccines have been in news for some negative remarks. There are a few cases of death and other medical related complications observed within 2 days of injecting the vaccine. The vaccines are still not ruled out to be the cause for the losses of health. Hence even many doctors and science technocrats are reluctant to take the vaccines now.
Vaccines are meant to save life. Not to take life. In Indian, two different vaccines are released to the open public, while the third phase of testing is not done yet. It appears that the first 3 crore vaccines could be the unofficial testing done on a large section of the people in India.
In India, Covid 19 has spread to quite a number of people, however the mortality rate is less than 1.5%, according to worldometers.info, as on 12th January 2021. Since the past 10 months, the total number of members contracting the Covid 19 are 1,04,79,913 (over 1 crore and 4 lakhs). Of them the people who’ve died are 1,51,364. (Little over 1 and a half lakh). 1.01,11,294 (more than 1 crore) patients have completely recovered. To be precise, the mortality rate is 1.4%. Not even 1% of the total Indian population contracted the virus. So the question is: Are we exaggerating the pandemic? I don’t deny the existence of the pandemic. But shouldn’t we be making the vaccine more safer than the pandemic itself. We hope that the vaccines don’t cause more loss to human lives, more than the threat of pandemic itself.
A question: Should all the 138 crore Indians be given vaccines, while just a little over 1 crore Indians have contracted the virus? It looks like the Indians have shown to have natural immunity against the pandemic to some extent. And now that the herd immunity is expected to fight the virus, what’s the appropriate step to curb the pandemic? That’s the topic to be addressed by the scientific community. Thanks.