Vaccination Drama

 I am sure most people my age remember their first mass vaccination experience. We all stood in long lines at a designated vaccination site to take the latest, greatest polio vaccine developed by a gentleman named Sabin. We popped a little sugar cube in our mouths and headed back home. Mine was given at Southgate School - the first school in California that I attended after moving from Colorado to California in 1959. That was the second polio vaccine available, the other being developed by Jonas Salk. I had that vaccination (regular needle type) years earlier in Colorado. As a result of those vaccinations,polio has been nearly eradicated. In 2016 only 42 cases of  polio were reported worldwide. Unfortunately the number of cases is on the rise, including cases caused by live strains of the virus included in the oral vaccinations.

Vaccine-derived polio is caused by remnants of earlier versions of the live virus used in the oral polio vaccine. The vaccine can be shed through feces. In places with poor sanitation, the vaccine can be spread through wastewater. Over time, the virus from the oral vaccine can replicate, regain strength and become just as virulent as the original virus against which it's supposed to protect. Most kids born after 2016 have no immunity to the most prominent vaccine-derived polio strain because that strain was thought to be on the verge of elimination and is no longer included in the primary oral vaccine they would have received.

The attempt to eradicate polio was going very well until it wasn't. Hmmmm - a few hundred cases of polio instead of hundreds of thousands. Have you heard of a case of smallpox recently? 

Now we are facing a worldwide pandemic that has killed over 500,000 Americans and 2.6 million worldwide. We are in the midst of a massive vaccination plan using vaccines approved for emergency use. Not surprisingly there is a degree of resistence to the vaccines available from a growing cadre of antivaxxers.  Covid-19 - the disease under assault by the vaccines is already mutating and changing. 

So why the drama over vaccination? Who wouldn't want a free vaccine that could protect them from serious illness and/or death? More people than you might think. Vaccination protects you and wearing a mask protects others because even if vaccinated you can be a carrier. Who wouldn't want to protect their loved ones? There are people that have been used by the government - experimented on and lied to that have a mistrust of the government. Trust me to them means buyer beware. Add to that the notion that the vaccines available for Covid-19 are seemingly  rush jobs thrown together without adequate testing and you can understand the resistance.  Then too, there is the fact that the part of the population that is the most adversely affected by Covid-19 is the least respected age group - seniors - and populations of color in our population. It is as if Covid-19 is simply the tool of natural selection and is just thinning the herd while offering survival of the fittest. Of course very few people will publicly state their support for that concept but we are clearly in the midst of  a white supremacist revolution of sorts. Lastly, a segment of  our population view Covid-19 as a biological warfare assault on the USA by the Chinese.

The decision was easy for me as every comorbidity that could affect my chances of survival is part of  my makeup. I am an obese senior citizen with type 2 diabetes and congestive heart failure. My chances of surviving a bout with Covid-19 are about the same as surviving a fight with Mike Tyson or George Forman in their prime. As we have learned how to treat the original strain of Covid-19, the new  variants are more virulent and  more highly communicable. We are likely to be dealing with this bugger for years. 

The choice is yours. Take the protection offered by vaccination or take your chances against a virus whose sole objective is survival. Don't want the government having any more control over your life? Do you really believe Bill Gates wants to microchip the planet through vaccines? Are you convinced that 5G radio frequency communications have a damaging health impact, and that either these are directly making people sick (i.e. COVID-19 doesn’t exist and people are actually suffering from 5G effects) or the radiation is depressing peoples’ immune systems and therefore making them more likely to suffer from the virus.

Your drama is your drama. Take the vaccine or do not take the vaccine. The choice is yours. Common sense win out or not. That is my take on this week's topic. For the record, I am approaching 24 hours since my second shot of the Pfizer  vaccine. No effects.

Be sure to check the other bloggers in our little blogging group to see what they think of Maria's suggested topic. 

Ramana, Padmum, Raju, Srinivas, Conrad, Maria, and Sanjana

I'll see all y'all next week, same bat time  - same bat channel.