Is there anyone in this country that has been so lucky to not have been touched by the loss of a relative, friend, colleague or neighbour to Covid-19?
With nearly 25,000 people in Malaysia dead from Covid-19 and many more of post-Covid-19 complications, not to mention those who are struggling with long Covid, it is hard to fathom why anti-vaxxers and the vaccine-hesitant still insist that they are safer without a vaccine.
A study by the United States' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has found that fully vaccinated people are 10 times less likely to be admitted to hospital and five times less likely to be infected than those who are unvaccinated. And unvaccinated people are 11 times more likely to die from the Delta variant than those who have been vaccinated.
Here, in Malaysia, the Health Ministry's Institute for Clinical Research (ICR) has found that fully vaccinated people are 83 per cent less likely to be admitted into the Intensive Care Unit and 88 per cent less likely to die from Covid-19. And while there are slightly varying levels of effectiveness between the vaccines themselves, the fact is that vaccines do protect.
Perhaps that is where vaccines of the past have gone wrong: so well have vaccines protected us from tuberculosis, smallpox, polio, measles and yellow fever, to name but a few, that the people of today enjoy the hard-fought efforts of scientists and vaccines of the past without even realising it.
Life has been so safe that some have allowed themselves to be lulled into thinking that they have the choice to not join everyone else in fighting this war, and yet will still stay safe. But, the war against Covid-19 is not a war where we can send off a battalion or two of soldiers and expect them to die for our sake while we go about our lives.
This enemy has landed on our shores. It is mingling among us. And, worse of all, it is invisible and smart at adapting itself. And, while it is true that death will come to us all eventually, we should ask ourselves: "Is this how I want to die?"; "Is that how I imagine my funeral to be?"
If we can alter the course of fate by doing one or two things differently, don't we owe it to ourselves and our loved ones to at least try? Proponents of "natural immunity" claim that it is far more effective than a vaccine.
Unfortunately, with this virus, natural immunity has not been proven to last more than a few months, at best. But, more importantly, in order to get natural immunity, one has to first get infected and fall sick. That's like playing Russian roulette, with extra bullets, some of which explode on impact.
All this while, the lockdown has been buying us time, allowing us to hide from the virus just long enough for vaccines to be created and for people to be inoculated.
But, everything is now opening up and, soon, children will be going to school. The scenario is changing and we have to be prepared for it.
Infections are still high because more people are going out and more are becoming careless with the safety protocols. But, ultimately, the ones who will pay for it will largely be the people who are unvaccinated. They should not be let to rue their obstinance.