I recently read a piece on the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and he was quoted saying: “There is no excuse to get any complacency about the coronavirus.” He then went on to say that he didn’t want people to think they were immune against it, but there are still going to be cases which will require medical care in hospitals or other healthcare facilities. These doctors and nurses will have to spend their time treating patients when and we all need them. But we don’t know how many of these cases will occur again. So some countries might start thinking as they have done in previous years and maybe get in line for a vaccine to fight Covid. That doesn’t help us right now because most of these countries don’t have enough vaccines to fight a virus like this. There has been talks about the development of more vaccines so we may not see another outbreak with such an impact.
We’ve also seen the US President-elect Joe Biden promise several million doses for his country next week. Which should go a long way towards helping out the world, especially if the WHO declares someone else’s coronavirus a global health emergency. Many countries might want to start getting vaccinated too as quickly as possible to protect themselves from another lockdown.
The news reports I read said that Italy would receive 2 million COVID vaccines by December or if not then it can try to get more. The Pfizer/BioNTech has ordered 40 million doses in total, making a large donation of 80 million. If the USA gets 50,000, that would give us 30 million doses, which would save a lot of American lives. In China, at least 3 million people have already been vaccinated, so they will probably vaccinate others soon. This might be helpful if you can’t stand waiting for a shot to become available, unless people actually do decide to get one. And those countries aren’t always ready at the moment.
They can also get a boost from India, who have already administered around 1.75 million doses. Another thing to be noted here is the fact that it takes only two jabs. So if you are given a first jab a second one will need to happen. For example, if you are jabbed at the airport, it will take around three hours to make a decision. Whereas with a drive-through vaccination centre there might not be room for error or anything, so it probably takes a bit longer to administer.
So what do you think about people asking why everyone is safe? Why are governments vaccinating if someone has Covid already. Well, it depends on the vaccine. Since the Chinese strain originated in Wuhan and many other countries have been affected, they don’t know where most cases originated. Countries like Britain, Denmark etc have gone back to lockdowns to stop transmissions but then have returned to normal in January. Even though there are still outbreaks in some places, people are doing very well without having any symptoms so are still allowed to go about their everyday business. It depends on the country. Some nations are allowing travel into their borders and even have started testing. But let’s assume it is safe to travel again just as soon as they have confirmed there is no spreading.
Then let’s consider the situation over Europe, it hasn’t really started to affect any European country in particular. Europe did face outbreaks when Italy’s emerged but didn’t stay locked down until May. Some other European nations were hit hard during the winter but this hasn’t stopped them from continuing with life normally. We might get to summer 2021 and things will go back to pretty much the same. I think that’s unlikely since viruses don’t usually react to changes in weather.
With our current climate we can’t predict what might be coming up in the future. It has been a struggle so far, but the vaccine will eventually get us through to Easter next year. By then the population will probably be used to the change in temperature. How people act will also determine where they live in Europe, so people in cities will want to return home to their families. They might feel safer working from home rather than commuting but they might want to go back into London to play sport. People will decide whether they are happy with the new reality or not.
The news reports said that Germany planned to start giving vaccinations in their schools and this could possibly spread from there. Not that it wouldn’t spread, it would just in different ways. In the United States they are focusing on teachers, essential workers etc, because the elderly in society will not be getting vaccinated by March 2021. They are also planning on trying to open pharmacies and have started testing for children of teachers. Maybe this would create a false sense of security because school staff would get Covid. So they’ll spread it in a younger person and then work back to kids within the school so that by the time its finished by end of term, every child has had the vaccine.
It would be good to start with the most vulnerable before any other groups. Vaccine hubs will be very useful in some countries. Like Belgium, Sweden and Spain. You can even use the EU strategy which means the whole continent will also get access to vaccines. It shouldn’t be a problem if the EU gets enough vaccines in time. If Russia decides to produce more vaccines, we might find that this would also be a problem rather than an advantage. Russia is able to supply around 11 million people but due to the lack of production it won’t be able to share it with enough countries to offer it to. What countries will receive which type of vaccine and how big will it be will be another story.
So when will the actual vaccine arrive in Europe? As soon as possible to European countries and maybe the rest of the world. We need a wide range of vaccines because every country is different. Then we can wait until we start seeing the effects of each one and when things become clear. Because it will all depend on various factors. One factor being how effective the vaccine is. Every vaccine is a little different. Especially if it has come from an animal origin, since they haven’t developed that yet there will be side effects. Plus, if people don’t like any side effects it would probably be a risk not to use it. Some people want to take advantage of it and ask questions about the effectiveness of it. So they might have any questions that could distract us.
But we need to understand all sides of the coin and make sure its the best vaccine to choose. Although all people will be scared, I think it’s important to vaccinate when your vaccine is safe. Let’s hope that the vaccine will actually treat a disease instead of causing pain. No vaccine is 100% safe so while it will keep more people safe than not, it will give more people sickness with bad symptoms.
This may sound crazy but I think a cure to a deadly disease would be better than a drug that makes people sick. It’s hard to kill Covid if you have no cure. Our planet has to heal itself first, and that should take priority above all else. So my question is how would we survive without a vaccine? Unless the virus finally goes away or becomes something completely harmless, it is not worth using medication or anything else. Our survival would depend on how effective our vaccine is. Are we willing to live with a deadly illness? Or would we rather be healthy?
Well hopefully people will realise that we all got ourselves into this mess because of our ignorance of science. All of the media outlets have been covering covid as if it’s part of a pandemic, so it doesn’t seem like it’s relevant anymore. Now people have to think of it like a human rights issue that isn’t related to the pandemic. Yes it’s a crisis that needs to be tackled, like war, terrorism, famine etc. But people also shouldn’t forget about the last time they needed a cure. Yes they did that after all the scientific breakthroughs, but we didn’t forget about how humans were treated. Scientists told us that it would be easier to solve the problems after a cure but I don’t think they knew what would happen and they didn’t care at that point.