Saturday, August 21, 2021

Huogai – Anti-Vaxxers get what they deserve

Only in the United States, world’s greatest power, can a handful voices exercise their individual rights to negate greater public interest and even challenge the validity of President Joe Biden’s wish for everybody to be vaccinated against the Covid coronavirus. Incredibly, a public health issue can become a political issue. Those on the political right believe religion trumps science and getting vaccinated is tantamount to blasphemy. Furthermore, the need to wear a mask in public is regarded as infringement of the right of personal freedom. Science tells us that when enough of us are vaccinated, the virus can find no new victims as host and that’s when the virus dies. There are some southern states where the extent of vaccination is well under 50%, and the unvaccinated population are waiting for the virus invasion. No doubt, they place their faith in God to keep them from the disease. The latest Delta variant is deadlier and more contagious. So far, over 99% of those that have died in the US from this variant were unvaccinated. As of end of July, grossly unvaccinated Florida has three times the national average that contracted the virus. As patients entering the hospital struggling to breath, they begged for a jab of vaccine, much too late of course. When the full force of this variant hits the under vaccinated states, those that preached the gospel against vaccination will bear a heavy responsibility for the unnecessary deaths. Particularly prominent among the antivaxxers has been Robert F. Kennedy Jr. His name gave him added credibility. I wept when his father was assassinated in the hotel kitchen in Los Angeles but I won’t shed tears if the son is struck down by the virus. Huogai is the Chinese term for “you get what you deserve.” Unfortunately, their just deserts does not end with their death but keeps the virus alive to strike the innocents around them. The same goes for the governors of Florida and Texas, who have insisted that wearing a mask and getting a vaccination is up to individual decision and cannot be mandated from top down. Most Americans do not appreciate how fortunate they are, living in a wealthy country and thus among the first to have access to Covid vaccination. Poor countries, such as those in Africa, can’t get access to the needed vaccine and their rate of vaccination is less than 1%. It goes without saying that future mutations of the virus are incubating in those places just waiting to strike along with the Delta variant. The sentiment against vaccination is not only harmful to the interest of the American public but to the world. Unless massive vaccination takes place worldwide, the virus will persist. It should be obvious to anyone that the two greatest economies of the world, China and the US, must work together in order to eradicate this virus in its present form and prevent future mutations. In that respect, the US has a lot to learn from China. China started its domestic vaccination later than the US but has already exceeded 1.6 billion jabs, covering the cities and most of the surrounding areas. Rural areas will take more time. Recently when the city of Guangzhou detected an imported case of Covid, instant mass testing was initiated. My Chinese American friend who lives near Dongguan, a city of 10 million adjacent to Guangzhou, reported that everybody in the city got tested for Covid in one day. He got tested at 3 PM and received his test results by midnight. Needless to say, if the one case had spread, it would have been detected and arrested. China’s model relies on organization, discipline, corps of instantly available volunteers and a culture where cooperation for the greater good of the society is more important than the individual right to go against the grain.

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