A letter to anti-vaccine zealots

Hello, I am your friend, your neighbor, your co-worker, your client, your compatriot and we even belong to the same species. I am writing you not in order to convince you, but to move you. We are in the middle of a pandemic and you are the person who can save us all. In truth, you are more important than Dr. Fauci, Minister Sucre, and even more than the lady of the clandestine vaccines in Coco del Mar.

I listen to you and I understand you when you give the reasons for not getting vaccinated: that if it is an experimental vaccine, that if the technology is very different from the previous ones, that accepting vaccination means bowing before the power and the occasional explanation that vaccines are the beginning of a dictatorship.

I said at the beginning of this letter that I am not trying to convince you, surely your sources of information are better than the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, the Pasteur Institute in Paris or the University of Oxford. Surely that doctor who recommended chlorine, hydroxychloroquine and passion fruit juice will receive a Nobel Prize in Medicine next year. Of course, I understand that all scientific journals are conspiring to hide the truth. Not to mention those governments and pharmaceutical companies that just want to make money. Surely there is a lot of truth in all this that you affirm, but I would like you to listen to me as a representative of a very particular group of human beings: those of us who want to live.

I don’t know the content of the vaccines. I also don’t know the formula for Coke, the ingredients in the toothpaste, the active molecule in my deodorant, or if the bread for breakfast came from genetically engineered wheat. What I do know is that if you don’t get vaccinated, many people who can’t get vaccinated, such as young children, people with compromised immune systems, and others for whom vaccines don’t have the desired effect are put in jeopardy by your decision.

Fastening your seatbelt inside cars saves many lives. This is the result of a social imposition. As is the ban on smoking in enclosed spaces, not to mention the ban on carrying weapons and explosive material on airplanes. All of these measures have saved many, many lives, but one of the most life-saving in history is vaccination.

I want you to know that by last Wednesday, July 28, 27% of the planet’s population had received at least one vaccine. Some 2 thousand 153 million people have already been pricked with about 3 thousand 970 million doses of the inoculants. This seems to be good news, it can be damaged if you do not get vaccinated, since the new variants of the coronavirus, especially the Delta variant, are more resistant and more contagious. Known vaccines are weaker against this variant, and there is a possibility that if we do not stop the pandemic soon, the coronavirus will continue to mutate until it exceeds what we have to fight it. The only thing that can avoid this is that there is herd immunity that reduces the risk that the infections get out of control. So that you understand the threat we face, when the pandemic was just beginning, a very religious Korean woman infected about 1,500 people because she attended multiple churches.

I reiterate that I am not asking you to get vaccinated for yourself, if not for everyone else. Your loved ones, neighbors, co-workers, and even strangers who are doing a supermarket with you, eating in a restaurant near you, or serving you in a state entity, we need you to get vaccinated. You put our life in danger.

Sincerely,

Rodrigo Noriega (La Prensa)

(vaccinated with Astrazeneca at Rommel Fernández on May 8 and June 7)