Day 22 - Vaccination

This is something that became extremely popular world over since mid-2020 when a Covid-struck world started thinking about a strong armour to beat the virus. On January 16, 2021, India began its anti-Covid vaccination programme.

It's been controversial too.  But not in India, where there was so much enthusiasm that on the very first day, people complained about technical glitches in the software to manage the programme.

There has been hardly any vaccine hesitancy here. If at all people didn't get jabbed, it was mainly because of complacency or laziness.

Right now, the administration of precaution dose or the booster dose is ongoing. I got mine a few days ago, on Saturday. 

Close to 2 billion doses have been administered in India so far -- first, second and booster put together.

The Union Government's CoWIN dashboard gives all the details.

There have been cases of people developing adverse reactions. But they are just 0.005% of all the people who got immunized.

BETTER BE JABBED THAN BE IN HOSPITAL

It's not that there isn't anyone skeptical of the vaccination, be it of any manufacturer. 

Just yesterday, The Times of India reported quoting experts of the government's own ICMR-National Institute of Virology that both Covishield and Covaxin might be less effective against the latest variant of Omicron for people who haven't already contracted Covid compared to those who had contracted the disease.

But the overwhelming perception seems to be: better get vaccinated (manage the minor fever or body pain, nausea, etc., thereafter, if at all) and be safe rather than contract Covid and get hospitalized.

There is also a feeling that a number of Indians have acquired some amount of herd immunity, thanks to the crowded public places.

INDIA'S NATIONAL IMMUNIZATION PROGRAMME

Getting vaccinated is nothing new for us, since our government has had, for so many decades, a robust vaccination programme even before Covid happened.

A baby is vaccinated against BCG, Hepatitis B, and polio soon after birth.

Then follows, at regular intervals, more doses of vaccines against:

• polio
   
• diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B and haemophilus influenzae type b (pentavalent vaccine)
  
  
• rotavirus
  
  
• measles, mumps and rubella
  
  
• Japanese Encephalitis
  
  
• deficiencies of vitamin A
  
  
• DPT (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus) booster doses and 
  
  
• tetanus 

All this ends only when the child is 16 years of age.

The only difference between these vaccines and the Covid vaccines is that the latter were developed very recently, at a hectic pace, against a deadline, without probably as many trials as probably they would have required, to fight a disease that we are yet to understand fully.

The way I see it is: it's better to get vaccinated than not.

Image by cromaconceptovisual from Pixabay

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This post is part of the blogging challenge in April every year, wherein bloggers put up one post a day, from A to Z, every day except Sundays. 

I'm participating in #BlogchatterA2Z. I am also on A2Z April Challenge.