Vaxx to the max – or not

‘I’m not taking the vaccine,” my friend tells me matter-of-factly. I nearly choke on my coffee – how I miss my red, but desperate times and all… We both lost a friend to Covid-19 two weeks ago and still shake our heads over the kids’ 25-year-old friend who was here one day, gone the next.

I’m shocked, to put it mildly. You see, this redhead does not wear a tinfoil hat and is by far the loudest shouting down flat-earthers.

She knows the polio vaccine saved thousands of kids from walking with a limp. But here she sits, cross-legged on my stoep, calmly telling me “no jab”.

Why? She doesn’t feel “enlightened”, she tells me – a clever word she uses in many conversations.

She’s clever too; no conspiracy theorist; level-headed; all her kids are vaccinated, admittedly because the school system left her with no choice. I remember looking after those white fold-over vaccination cards better than my kids, because no jab, no Grade 1.

Her kids are pro-vaxxers “but it’s because they want to protect me, being Of That Age, you know?” she says over our third cuppa.

I’m quoting a Romanian orthodox priest who was called “Satan’s priest”, a “disbeliever” for having the vaccine because “I don’t want to send others to intensive care or to the Lord too soon through ignorance or stupidity”.

She stands fast…

But I’m slowly enlightened: she knows too little about our Indian vaccine. And do you blame her? Mention Pfizer and BioNTech and we all know it works. Study after study; trial after trial… It even works on SA’s mutation.

But ours… What’s it called again? And it’s not really Indian, is it? Just packaged there?

I blame Them. Forget your education programme for the herd. The herd needs facts – all of it. How many trials? How many reports? How effective is it really? The only 62% I read this week? And the big question: when?

No wonder we are grasping at straws. We are not enlightened. We hear about an animal dewormer that “works wonders” for Covid-19 – and we seriously think of using it, proven or not.

Good heavens, listen to the priest: “I trust the scientific authorities, not shamans, witchdoctors and whatnot.”

I’m getting my jab.