Amid multi models, the one consensus in tackling Covid: Vaccines work

IN the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, it was said that Covid-19 was transmitted through surfaces and that one can get infected after handling the mail or even pamphlets.

We were instructed not only to wash our hands every hour, but also to wear gloves and ensure that we disinfect every delivery package and thoroughly wash, even with soap and hot water, the fruits and vegetables we bought. This is not to mock the medical professionals who warned us of transmission risks in early 2020. Science is by definition an ongoing process of trials and errors; what is considered a definite assumption today will be challenged by new discoveries tomorrow. Certainly, the advisory to wash hands regularly still makes a lot of sense. And wearing gloves was not such a big hassle. Better to be safe than sorry, for sure.

The point is that much of the criticism directed at how governments have been managing the response to the Covid assault should consider that political leaders, very much like the people they represent, were terrified by what was taking place around the world, particularly in the early days as hundreds of thousands of people became victims of the pandemic.

After all, the last global pandemic, in the form of the Spanish flu, devastated humanity more than 100 years ago, and very few people have remained alive to educate us about their experiences then. Moreover, the political leaders who had ordered citizens to stay home and wear face masks, who shut down businesses and schools and imposed other draconian measures, were following the advice of their medical experts, some of them world-renowned scientists.

The result has been a never-ending debate over which countries should be ranked 'winners' or 'losers' in the fight against the coronavirus, which meant in simple terms which governments were pushing the number of infections down. In retrospect, we now know that some of those governments that were celebrated at one time as success stories - including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Taiwan, Sweden and Germany - ended up facing new rounds of infections. Hence while US President Joe Biden has been applauded for his administration's rapid vaccine roll-out, the number of Americans infected by the virus has actually risen during his first year in office.

The reality is that there is no one 'model' of how to fight the coronavirus, and each country's response reflects also its national culture, its geographical location and the size of its population, among other things - not to mention that the advent of new variants of Covid-19 makes it difficult to set precise goals and political willpower to fight it.

But one thing is clear: The vaccines that have been developed in response to the pandemic do work, and by not taking them, people are taking a huge risk to themselves and to those around them. Numerous studies have shown that the highest rate of Covid infections and deaths in the US are in areas with the lowest levels of vaccination. And vice versa. Following the advice of the medical experts and getting vaccinated as soon as possible can save lives.