One Million Mark

Yesterday, we have surpassed the one million mark for active Covid-19 cases and there is no signs of it easing down. 

The only comfort one has is that we have ramped up our vaccination rate. One should also remember that those who have been infected also will have natural antibodies. These will be the two sources in our race to attain herd immunity (thought to be achievable after 60-70% of the population vaccinated). On the other hand, one has the mutations of the virus to factor in, particularly if the infections are not contained globally. There is no guarantee of new surge of infections in the future. In fact, having vaccinated does not mean one will not get infected. In fact, there are cases I know personally who got vaccinated fully, got infected thereafter, though the symptoms are milder. According to MOH, they categorised the infections as in the table below.

The vaccinated cases I know above rarely goes beyond Stage 3. Thus, one should not be too comfortable, even after vaccination. I, for one, have not gone out for weeks now, relying on foodpanda and my sons for some groceries or banking matters. For more information about our current situation, the articles below should be helpful:

• Christine Aschwanden, "Five reasons why Covid herd immunity is probably impossible"
• Nicky Philips, "The coronavirus is here to stay - here's what that means"

As a Muslim, I see the current pandemic as a 'bala' (calamity). Now, to some this is probably a forgone conclusion, but I still see people's reactions and actions in the socmed sphere, as if it is not. The two articles above should give the signal that our problems are far from over and not to mention about the economic gloom that arises from the pandemic. I sincerely hope that some miracles will happen to get us out of the pandemic (called it divine intervention or human ingenuity or whatever). Let us do our part by staying home and limit our movement as much as we can. Let us not complain about boredom of being at home, when there are others who are working hard to ensure our health system not to collapse. When my son join the lab that helped do the Covid testing, he got the evening shift to work beginning from 3pm until 12 midnight, reaching home at about 1 a.m. with only one day leave (usually Sunday). Yesterday however, he was still working and has today as a replacement leave. The frontliner doctors and nurses will have probably much worse working hours. So when there is a viralled video, that some people are dancing joyfully at some official function, I find it to be really upsetting. Please do this at your personal time at home and not in public. We should be thinking and helping out how to get out from our current gloom, contributing in whatever capacities we have. My prayer is that we will always be guided in our actions.