Despite the country’s slow pace of vaccination that has seen only 13 percent of the population given one dose and only 11 percent fully vaccinated since jabs started in March, I must say that, based on the people I know who have gotten their shots, it feels like a bigger percent has already been reached.
Maybe I’m just privileged to be in the upper 10 percent of the population in terms of resources and vaccination status, but as the number of vaccinated people I interact with increase, it is only natural to start hoping that a return to normalcy is within reach, even if it only among our own little mostly-vaccinated bubbles.
When our own little social circles seem to be vaccinated already, it is easy to forget that a whopping 87 percent of the population remains unvaccinated and vulnerable to Covid-19 and that the goal of herd immunity or population protection is still a long way off.
This false sense of security that comes with being around mostly-vaccinated people can be dangerous because we are a long way from the goal of herd immunity that is being made even more difficult to achieve because of the Delta variant. The combination of a sluggish vaccination effort, the more infectious Delta variant, and our government’s still drastically managed pandemic response, means that even if the vaccination drive has started and we are feeling the gains, we are still a long way from being safe and normal.
In my case, my two teenaged kids are still unvaccinated because they are not yet part of the government’s slow-motion vaccination priorities. The private sector vaccine supply that would allow willing parents to purchase jabs for their kids is not yet widely available. And even if that were possible, there is still no approval from the FDA or DOH. So even if we are willing to pay to vaccinate our eligible kids so our household can be fully inoculated, meaning the vaccinated adults don’t have to fear infecting the unvaccinated kids stuck at home, there is currently no way to do so.
The Delta variant makes matters worse because of its infectiousness that has reduced the efficacy of vaccines against infection. Make no mistake, the vaccinated are still protected from serious illness, hospitalization and death, but the reduced protection from infection means that, compared to before, we now have a bigger chance of picking up the virus and bringing it home where it can wreak havoc among our unvaccinated loved ones.
Breakthrough infections are supposed to be rare but anecdotal evidence suggests that it is more common than we thought. One factor might be our government’s choice of less effective yet more expensive vaccines. The differences might’ve been tolerable during the pre-Delta era but because we are saddled with a government of bumbling boomers who haven’t done anything significant to stop Delta from inundating the country, using the vaccine with the lesser efficacy could have a bigger impact. To be fair to Sinovac, breakthrough infections have also been observed with AZ, Pfizer, Moderna and other supposedly better vaccines. But when the population is 110 million, the small differences in percentages matter. It’s just our luck that the critical decisions over the past 500 days of hell were made by retired generals and cronies rather than scientists and epidemiologists.
There are too many stories of breakthrough infections among the vaccinated. Although some were admitted to hospitals as precautionary measures, most of them were merely inconvenienced by the slight symptoms of Covid-19, attesting to the fact that vaccines do work in preventing serious illness, a visit to the ICU, and death. But because we are a long way from herd immunity, these breakthrough infections are still extremely dangerous to the unvaccinated.
In my case where our home is only 50 percent vaccinated because of the kids, a breakthrough infection to any of the parents can result in a life-threatening infection to the kids.
This is why we still have to be on high alert even if fully vaccinated. We still have to be aware of mask wearing, social distancing, hand washing and ventilation at all times because 87 percent of the population has not been vaccinated. The senior citizens may be mostly protected by now, but our kids that scientists once thought were relatively safe from Covid are not yet vaccinated and, based on reports, youth is no longer a protection from the Delta variant.
We are still a very long way from the finish line and the worst part is that we cannot take matters into our own hands. We have to wait for our sluggish government to move faster with its vaccination program and priorities. Until things do improve, we have to think and act like its day 1 of the Covid-19 pandemic instead of day 500++.*
