When we think of school, the first thing that comes to our mind are teachers, students, classrooms and books. What about the other staff? The ones who guard the gates, the ones who look after all the plants, the ones who run errands? While we were all locked inside our houses sitting behind screens. These people came to work every single day. They faced numerous difficulties while coming to work. Sometimes it was the police that stopped them and other times it was the sealing of their communities due to the high number of cases. Just like the doctors and police, they too have been working through the lockdown. When we interviewed them and asked them about their views on the vaccine, they said “We’re hoping to get it by next month”. This is where our hearts sunk.
With the advancement towards a cure to COVID-19 in the form of a vaccine, the government has reassured that vaccines might be out by June 2021. However, with the amount of times this deadline has changed, I have started having trust issues. According to AIIMS Director Randeep Guleria there won’t be any vaccines for common people until 2022. (I quite agree with him here).
Even though people have heard that the vaccine would be coming out soon, they are not sure when it would actually come out. Some think that they would get it by next month, some think they would get it by 2022 while some believe they would not get it at all.
But even when the vaccine is out, there are other factors to ponder upon.
In a democratic country where we promote equality and justice, why would there be favourites? Well, it turns out that this has more to do with equity than equality. Imagine a situation where there is a war. There is the frontline, where people are fighting the war. The people in the frontline are protecting everyone by putting their own lives at risk. If a brand new super vitamin came out, then obviously, it should be given to the frontliners in this war-like the doctors and police force. These warriors have saved so many lives and have tried their best to keep the tiger in the cage.
Just like during flight safety instructions you’re told to secure your oxygen mask first and then help others. The same thing applies here too. We need to immunize our frontline warriors so that they are able to continue with their work.
One of the major questions here is then why isn’t India distributing vaccines even when they are out already? There is already a vaccine available in the market produced by an American pharmaceutical company called Pfizer. It is proven that this vaccine is 90% effective in developing immunity against COVID-19. One of the excuses given by the government on why India did not accept the idea of importing Pfizer’s vaccines is mainly because of its price. It would have cost Rs. 2736 per vaccination. If we imported it, a lot of money would have been spent by the government on the behalf of the people as the population of India is absolutely huge. The total cost of all vaccines would have been Rs. 3,55,680 Cr. But in reality, this merely touches the GDP of a country with such a vast population. Even after subtracting this huge amount from the GDP, we are left with Rs. 1,89,24,021 Cr to spend for the country. Clearly, the taxes paid by us taste really good, since they are all being eaten by the government, with none left for us.
Another reason given for not importing the vaccines was because the vaccine needed to be stored at minus seventy degrees. According to most sources, even the hospitals in some of the big cities across the world don’t have the facility to do so. Then the question arises - how can we make it reach the rural areas of the country? We may easily get over this problem by firstly distributing all the freezers amongst equal chunks of population and then not sending the vaccine to the rural area but sending the people in the rural areas to the nearest vaccine setup.
Some of the challenges that we might face if the vaccine is out in 2022 are firstly the accessibility of the vaccine by everyone. There will be a very low price tag on them of Rs. 227 per head as expected by the government. While this might be a really cheap amount for the Government of India with a GDP of Rs. 1,92,79,701 it is definitely not the cheapest for people like migrant labourers. If we take a Migrant labourer’s family with a total of 6 members in it, then the total cost of getting everyone vaccinated would be 7.5 times a person’s daily income which is a lot. There are still a lot of people in India who are not immunized/ vaccinated against the basic diseases that can be deadly. Many people haven’t taken the tetanus vaccine too.
For these people, the government might take an initiative to create free vaccines with the price we pay for the vaccines. And if the government does not apply to it we need to persuade the government peacefully into doing so.
In recent research, it was shown that animals can also contract COVID 19. Our pets are also a part of our family. They are alive too and they bring joy to our life. We ourselves are animals too. So then, shouldn’t our vaccines work for our pets too as we just concluded that we are both animals? As it turns out; it is not so. Animals have a much more tolerance to local inflammatory reactions and damaged tissues than humans. Humans are more sensitive to medicines. Therefore, this not only differentiates between us and our pets but it makes it easier to develop vaccines for our friends. So funnily enough there is already a vaccine available for our little furry friends to prevent COVID 19.
Therefore we still have to wear masks for quite a long duration of time for our own good. Staying at home and hoping that maybe someday all of us are able to get vaccinated is the best we can do for now.
Image courtesies:
NBC News
Science
KQued
Instapix
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