Soon 2022 — yet have you been vaccinated?
To start off this story with an uplifting spirit of TED discourse, I would like to simply ask myself, or, whoever happens to read this by accident,
“How are you? Has life treated you better this time?”
As for me, I have been well, neither so great nor terrible, but well.
It has finally dawned on me that 2021 is soon turning into 2022, meaning in December, I will have officially passed a total of 2 years co-existing, trying to make amends with the COVID-19 situation. At the back of my head, there is always this question ticking me off. What would have happened if COVID-19 hadn’t occurred in the first place? And the most common answer that I could utter would be better, or sometimes, I don’t know either. The COVID-19 pandemic has heavily affected everyone across the nation, even, in every corner of the world. I have seen people grieving due to various reasons, namely having witnessed their loved ones fall ill due to contracting the virus, getting their salary reduced, or worse, losing their jobs due to companies’ financial crisis.
I remember, for a brief period around May until June, Indonesia seemed to face a sudden surge in COVID-19 cases, which caused hospital overloads across several densely populated regions. Though up till now, everything has gotten much better, still those painful days in our track record should always serve as a reminder that the COVID-19 pandemic is not one’s problem to deal with, but everyone’s. My family and I, too, had contracted the virus last May. We acted immediately by reporting our symptoms to the health facilities nearby to prevent the worst scenario from happening and do self-isolation at home hereafter. This isn’t supposed to be my sob story, but those days were heart-throbbing. I had no will to eat and sleep on time; I lost a few pounds and the eye bags under my eyes were looking unpretty. Fortunately, though, those days have passed by and, at least in early July, I could finally sigh in relief. Fast forward to 3 months later, I finally got my 1st dose of Pfizer vaccine (I am vaxxed yeay), and my 2nd dose is scheduled 21 days after. My brother is fully vaccinated, yet my parents are scheduled a bit later though.
I have had my own wishful thinking for 2022, yet I don’t want to jinx them. I truly miss what life used to offer before the pandemic began. Not saying that we couldn’t do anything now though, but there were obviously some significant alterations shoved down before the realization could sink in. Only later, when I started accepting, slowly adapting to the current normal situation, I have made up some peace of mind.
Considering our current situation, I think it is important to be hopeful despite despite despite. Hope, for me, is a beacon of light shunning the darkness away from the mind. I believe hope could be anything, in any form that I want it to be. Right now, one of my biggest hopes is to have the world recover from COVID-19. Moreover, with the local government’s current pace of massively distributing vaccines in densely populated and severely affected areas across Indonesia, hopefully, things are constantly getting better. However, one thing must be kept in mind, the vaccine doesn’t fully protect people from being infected by the SARS-COV-2 virus and its variants, yet when infected, it will reduce the likelihood of severity and hospitalization, or worse, death. Additionally, to hope for our collective recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is to get vaccinated as soon as possible.
