We just want to encourage everyone at the start of this week to keep on pressing. During the middle of what looks like a third wave in the Caribbean, starting in Jamaica last month to country after country showing heightened COVID infection rates, just thank God most of us are still on this side of heaven and not suffering as many were at the onset.
The doctors around the world have done a fantastic job in keeping everyone abreast on how to keep ourselves safe in a sanitary way. Also, thank God we have enough medical staff to administer the vaccine jabs at a frequent pace. So we may have, once vaccine supplies keep coming through, vaccination of half of the population in each Caribbean and Central American country by Christmas time-which is a good clip for many of our undermanned and undersupplied countries.
The thing that troubles me is that no one knows when we will achieve this “herd immunity.” No one knows exactly what that is for each individual country, let alone the region. What does herd immunity look like is a question that has every health administrator stumped.
Herd immunity is defined as a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that can occur with some diseases when a sufficient percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, whether through vaccination or previous infections, thereby reducing the likelihood of infection for individuals who lack immunity, but what does that mean now?
That’s the thing. Are we going to stop with the lockdowns and restrictions when we get to a certain amount of jabs in the population? Is that what that means? Quite frankly, many persons don’t want to take any of these vaccines, so we have challenges on that front.
Secondly, how much more people will have to contract the COVID-19 to get us to the herd immunity? It seems sinister doesn’t it? People have to contract the virus to have herd immunity to save everybody else? That’s the God irony of all of this.
But, regardless of the perversities, please just keep on pressing. We are going to make it another year. I was hoping 2021 would not be a waste, but it apparently is going to be for a lot of people as it looks like we are going to have lockdowns for the majority of this year as we did for 2020. Keep calm, however.