Vaccine — The light at the end of the dark tunnel

It’s been exactly 1 year, 1 month and 17 days since I left campus.

What seemed like a short, fun break from the relentless pressures of college life turned faces into the most despised period of my (our) life.

More than a year later, as I skim through the columns of my newspaper, the question that flashes in my mind is that will this ever end?

History seems to be repeating itself but in an even worse way.

The scare is real, but are we still realizing it?

My family and I had tested Covid-19 Positive on 4th April 2021. Luckily, living in the UAE, I had the privilege to be vaccinated. We managed to survive without much trouble (thanks to the vaccine). The real concern was FEAR.

Being someone who had severe wheezing issues since my childhood, the FEAR captured me quickly & had gripped onto my parents even more tightly. A sneeze or a cough, they wouldn’t sleep the entire night to make sure I was okay.

The NOVELVIRUS that it is, its effects receded in 2 weeks.

But, little can I imagine about its impacts if I weren’t vaccinated and now that I told you, how I survived through it. Little do I know how I got exposed to it.

My family and I could be tagged as the corona- paranoids.

Thanks to my wheezing issues and my dad being diabetic, we were EXTRA- EXTRA careful! We barely step out of our home. Only my mum use to pick up groceries then and now.

When I first developed symptoms, I thought it was some good old flu due to climate change because I didn’t step out of my home. Eventually, I lost my complete sense of taste and smell.

Dettol smelled like — — NOTHING because I could smell nothing.

My mum had developed symptoms too, that’s when we realized it was no good old flu, but the Covid-19 Tsunami had hit us too.

If you say that Covid-19 will be deadly only if you are old, then trust me, I am 20, and I struggled the most in my family.

And suppose you think that vaccine is not working since I got infected by the virus even after two doses of the vaccine. In that case, you are failing to understand how a vaccine works.

A vaccine gives you immunity against the virus. It reduces the severity of the effects if you happen to be infected by the virus. That is, it makes your body ready to fight off the virus.

Let me give you a little glance at the statistics to emphasize the importance of vaccines, taking the example of the UAE. The government has administered vaccines to more than 10 million people.

And a study conducted by the Abu Dhabi Public Health Centre (ADPHC) has revealed that zero deaths have been reported among fully vaccinated Covid-19 patients & the efficacy of vaccination in preventing hospitalization is 93 per cent, reducing the need for ICU is 95 per cent.

This again depicts the fact that we are travelling in a very long dark tunnel, and the light at the end is the VACCINE.

At the end of the day,

Rich or Poor

Fit or Un-healthy

Old or young

It doesn’t matter. You have a fair chance of being infected. All you can do is, or more precisely, you can afford to do is get vaccinated. Till then, you have to stay home and be safe.

There are people out there working in the front line, risking their lives and that of their families. The least we can do is acknowledge the luxury that we have to work from home.

It’s the whole of Humanity against a virus.

I know it frustrating to be forced to stay at home, but we can’t afford to lose any more lives. Let’s stay at home for each other until we are all vaccinated.

I am one among the millions of you waiting to remove my mask and give a warm hug to my friend, who I haven’t met in more than a year.

But to reach there, we need to cross the dark tunnel.

Stay fearless and confident; we can beat this!