Munier got his second jab on Tuesday.
Side-effects? Niks. The sore arm lasted one day. Not even worth mentioning.
What a relief. Hallelujah!
After 18 months of death and disease, lockdown, family meetings, isolation, anxiety, stress and financial strain, there’s now hope of a healthy future without (or with less) horrible sanitisers, masks and social distancing.
Goodbye “new normal”, let’s get back to the old normal – going out, socialising, handshakes, hugs and kisses.
Munier is now fully vaccinated, so is Mrs Grootbek, oupa en ouma, and the rest of the immediate Grootbek familie. Alghamdulillah.
Now can we have a proper Labarang? And Christmas.
Look, we’re not out of the woods yet. The Coronavirus is going to be with us for some time.
People will still get infected. Vaccinated people will still test positive.
The difference is once you’ve had your shots, there’s a 95% chance that you won’t get severely ill – if you’ve had the double-dose Pfizer BioNTech vaccine.
There’s a 86% chance you won’t get seriously sick if you’ve had the Johnson & Johnson single dose.
And that’s the point. You can get sick, but the important thing is to avoid getting seriously ill, hospitalisation and death.
Sadly, Munier lost two cousins recently – still fairly young, in their 40s and 50s.
Both unvaccinated. Both had health issues. One can’t help wonder whether they might have survived had they had their jabs.
We’ll never know. Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioon.
At the beginning of the pandemic, experts said the only ticket out of this recurring, wave-after-wave nightmare was vaccines.
Now we are seeing that prediction come to pass.
Hospitals are only treating unvaccinated patients.
To illustrate the point, consider the following:
On 6 September, the Western Cape Health Department published that of 254 people hospitalised at Groote Schuur with Covid-19 that day, 99% (251/254) were unvaccinated.
And 100% of patients in High Care and ICU and on ventilators were unvaccinated.
While we’re on numbers, here’s another telling stat: Number of South Africans who have reportedly died due to Covid-19 to date: 85,468.
Number of South Africans who have reportedly died from Covid-19 vaccinations: 0.
The numbers paint a pretty clear picture, but you are free to draw your own conclusions.
Another advantage of getting vaccinated is that it stops the spread of the virus.
New studies are showing that vaccinations curb transmission by about 80%.
And government, business, event organisers and citizens are acting on this information.
On Sunday, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country was working on implementing “vaccine passports” for “various purposes and events”.
It’s been reported that companies are requiring their staff to be vaccinated.
And some mense are refusing to receive visitors who haven’t been vaccinated at their homes.
Anti-vaxxers have unfortunately become the new smokers.
Yes, it is your democratic and human right to rook ’n entjie.
What you put into your body is ultimately your choice.
However, you are not allowed to smoke in public areas, on public transport, the workplace and the private property of people who simply don’t smaak second-hand smoke. It sucks.
But for the sake of public health and the national campaign against Covid-19, the well-being of the collective supersedes the freedom of the individual.