STEADY ON, DESPITE VACCINE ROLLOUT

We have vaccines for COVID19. Good news. We’ve had to figure out how to vaccinate eight billion people.

It is amazing vaccines were developed so quickly. In less than a year they were available. We are told that it normally takes years to do this.

In a recent documentary the BBC showed how teams of diverse experts in various countries were willing to give themselves entirely to this task as long as it took to achieve the goal.

Academic, commercial and industrial experts pooled skills and knowledge, and dared to go outside the box, achieving success beyond their wildest dreams.

Imagine our current situation if it took two or three years to find a vaccine.

We cannot take it for granted that having the vaccine is an end to the pandemic. There are the matters of supply and distribution.

So far the rollout has been very uneven, with the richest countries buying up most of the supply. Yet we are told that we are not safe until we have herd immunity worldwide.

Going into June about 27 per cent (2.05 billion) of the global population has at least one shot. Canada has 60 per cent of us with at least one shot.

In comparison there are 30 countries with less than two per cent vaccinated and 27 more with less than five per cent.

The recent G-7 meeting pledged one billion doses. COVAX is aiming to secure two billion doses by the end of 2021.

The World Health Organization says it will take 11 billion doses to vaccinate 70 per cent of the world’s population. Even if this goal is reached, there will still be more than two billion people not vaccinated. In Canada even if we reach our 80 per cent goal, there will still be 7.6 million unvaccinated.

In Canada we are heading into a post-pandemic mood as we open up. To assume we can return to the world as we knew it is wishful thinking. We should continue to behave as if COVID-19 is still with us and will likely be here for a while. The best defence is still washing, masking, distancing and thinking about disease.

Our best protection in the long run is to protect the environment. It is likely that viruses thrive more in a dysfunctional planet.

If we frame the pandemic as a war, there will not be an armistice to declare that it’s over. Even when COVID-19 goes away, the other threat remains. In 1970 Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo comics, designed a poster to promote environmental awareness on the first Earth Day, using the quotation, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Collectively we are addicted to things. Consumerism demands the constant production of things to meet our insatiable appetite.

In doing so we are destroying and depleting the planet and poisoning the air and water required for life. We can’t go on like this.

Everett Hobbs Conception Bay South