Malaysia again climbed another rung – and is currently in the 37th spot in the list of countries with the highest number of Covid-19 infections.
News reports in Malaysia almost exclusively talk about the ongoing vaccination program – and as more and more Malaysians queue up to get their shots, there is the real danger that they are lulled into a false sense of security that they’re safe!
Folks, I'm repeating it again! Vaccines are not magic bullets.
Covid-19 infections may still occur even with vaccination; the point of inoculation is to prevent hospitalization overcoming health care capacity and resulting mortality. I repeat, herd immunity is still an elusive concept that is being debated by international medical experts.
Besides, this coronavirus has quite a few tricks up its sleeve. At the beginning of the pandemic, experts estimated that about 70% of the population needed to be vaccinated to keep everyone safe from the disease – but the Delta variant is more transmissible than the original virus, and the new estimate is closer to 85%.
Additionally, we need to monitor immunity in vaccinated people, because we don’t know yet how long protection will last. When immunity starts to wane, we need to detect this through immune surveillance tests and invite those who are vaccinated to get booster jabs of the same or updated vaccines, as needed, in the years to come.
My point is that vaccination seems to be our #1 priority, to the exclusion of other containment measures. And that makes it a flawed strategy.
Just look at our numbers. They are not diminishing, not at all. Surely, this tells us something.
I reckon we still have a long way to go out of this cursed pandemic.
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