Sin Chew Daily

37-year-old singer Siti Sarah, who was pregnant and expected to deliver this October, was killed by the coronavirus.

She was rushed to the hospital for a Caesarean section to save her baby after experiencing low oxygen levels last Wednesday. She didn't make it, leaving her heartbroken husband and four children.

It only took her five days from contracting the virus to death!

Her remorseful husband regretted not allowing his wife to go for vaccination.

Indeed, there isn't any cure for regret. Imagine, if she survived, she would have at least 40 more years to live based on the average lifespan of Malaysians. But sadly, those 40 years of family togetherness have been wiped out by the virus.

4.31 million people around this world have succumbed to the virus to this day. Here in Malaysia, our COVID-19 toll breached the 11,000-mark on Tuesday. Their passing has left behind enduring sorrows for those who love them, including helpless young children and aged parents.

These 10,000 deaths will leave a legacy of 10,000 sad stories to their surviving family members.

The lives of many people were abruptly cut short by the coronavirus prior to this July as a result of vaccine short supply. Fortunately we have had an ample supply of vaccines after July, and thus the dramatic rise in daily vaccination rates averaging more than 400,000 doses. So far more than 25 million doses have been administered in the country at an average of 76 doses for every 100 people.

Unfortunately the government's effort in expediting the vaccination rate has not been reciprocated by all Malaysians. So far only 21.44 million people who are eligible have registered for vaccination, and there are still about 20% of Malaysians still take vaccination very lightly.

We have heard too many illogical excuses for rejecting vaccination, including violation of human rights, personal factors, privacy, undesirable side effects…

Since when have privacy and human rights superseded the preciousness of being alive. What about enforcing SOP compliance, wearing of face masks, social distancing, interstate and inter-district travel bans, etc.? Do they constitute a violation of human rights?

Rejecting vaccines is a manifestation of selfishness and ugliness of human nature. These people may not have thought that once they contract the virus, they may spread the virus to their loved ones and other innocent people in the community. Do bear in mind that "empathy" is the biggest difference that sets humans apart from animals!

During the early days of the pandemic's onset, many people living in the West refused to put on masks and continued to assemble at clubs in the name of human rights. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro even led a street demonstration against virus lockdown. Because of such an attitude, countries like the US, UK, France, Italy, Brazil and Spain were badly hit by the pandemic.

Vaccination does provide some degree of protection especially in preventing severe illnesses and deaths.

Mass vaccination took place in Malaysia only after July, and because of that its death reduction effect has yet to be fully manifested. That said, it has been shown in some Western countries that there is a strong correlation between vaccination rate and the reduction in COVID-19 deaths.

Before June 1, as many as 128,043 people had been killed by the virus in the UK, at a mortality rate of 2.85%. After mass vaccination, the mortality has since plummeted by 20.4 times to a mere 0.14%. The same "before" and "after" mortality rates are 1.91% and 0.44% (4.34 times) for France, and 1.79% and 0.92% (1.95 times) for the US. The relative poor outcome for the US could be attributed to the large population that still resists vaccination.

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Francis S. Collins has warned that vaccine hesitancy could draw out the pandemic.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has even ordered schools not to enforce wearing of face masks among the students, while President Joe Biden has named seven Republican governors who have not enforced mask wearing in their states and not encouraged vaccination, causing the outbreak to go out of hand in these states.

White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci has also warned that failure to control the Delta variant could lead to worse mutations that evade vaccines.

We reap what we sow. The coronavirus will not favor a particular country or ethnicity. For the sake of ourselves and people around us, we all have the obligation to get ourselves inoculated and strictly adhere to all the anti-virus protocols.

The death of Siti Sarah and the experiences of individual countries in this war against the virus serve to remind us that we must not allow ourselves to be sacrificed unnecessarily, nor open a crack for the virus to gain access to our communities.