I am not a doctor, but I have played one, once, on stage. Thanks to the Anguilla Sunshine Theatre Company, so my comments below are based heavily on my onstage medical experience, intertwined with some snippets from the vast collection of often useless stories and trivia ensconced in my brain – to its own detriment – over the last sixty plus years.
Recently, I have been reading and listening, with increasing annoyance, as many persons continue to express often unfounded theories and stories bashing the benefits and safety of the recently approved COVID-19 vaccines. My already overloaded brain has been ingesting so many confusing theories, and information, that it now has difficulty differentiating between established facts and alternative facts. In the following paragraphs I will be trying to settle my state of confusion by elucidating my own disturbed musings.
Those who particularly draw my ire, are those who continue to spread doubts as to the ability and credibility of medical professionals and scientists, by implying that most of these practitioners are either ignorant of the facts or are a part of a global coverup.
Before I go any further, I hereby declare that I, Kenn Banks, being of sound mind and body, willfully and voluntarily and without duress, now state unequivocally and irrevocably, that I will be taking any COVID-19 vaccine that becomes available on the island of Anguilla.
During a smallpox outbreak in Boston in 1721, Onesimus, an African born enslaved man, informed a Puritan Minister of the practice from his home in Africa of inoculating against the disease by putting the pus from smallpox boils into an open wound of the person to be inoculated. It sounds gross, but it worked, and the practice was eventually spread throughout the North American colonies. In fact, the use of similar methods of inoculation, as those introduced in Boston by Onesimus in 1721, were also being used in China and India around the same time. Since then, vaccines have been used to slow the spread or to eradicate several diseases, including, polio myelitis, measles, mumps, hepatitis and many others.
Since those early beginnings, vaccination has become universally accepted as an important component of primary healthcare where the gold standard is now to have children inoculated from several diseases before their sixth birthday. In fact, the percentage of infants inoculated has become one of the key indicators of an effective primary health care structure.
According to a World Health Organisation publication: ‘Vaccination greatly reduces disease, disability, death and inequity worldwide ……. and the burden of infectious diseases. Only clean water, also considered to be a basic human right, performs better….. Misguided safety concerns in some countries have led to a fall in vaccination coverage, causing the re-emergence of pertussis (Whooping cough) and measles.’
Many of these so called ‘antivaxxers’ have based their objections on the research of a former doctor, Andrew Jeremy Wakefield, which was subsequently debunked. He was struck off the UK Medical Register for dishonesty in his research, acting against the best interests of his patients and for financial conflicts of interest. This mantle has since been assumed by a ‘motley crew’ of celebrities, politicians, conspiracy theorists, disgruntled individuals and opportunists, who continue to peddle their ‘bogus science’ to an often gullible, uninformed, and confused public.
While these antivaxxers continue to exercise and demand their own right not to be vaccinated, I am really confused as to why they now feel justified in trying to deny others their own right to be vaccinated by disrupting operations at COVID-19 vaccination centres. Maybe then it is not about personal rights at all, but some other sinister motive.
Apart from the antivaxxers, many others have expressed concern with the speed of the development of these vaccines, but it is highly unlikely that thousands of scientists would risk their stellar professional reputations, even less so would universities and university researchers, for the short-term fame of being early to market with a vaccine that then turns out not to work or, even worse, to be detrimental to the health and lives of those who receive it.
I recently had an email exchange with a friend of mine who quoted the proverb, ‘necessity is the mother of invention,’ as the reason they are not enthused about using the vaccine. I didn’t challenge that anomalous use of the proverb then. But I must say now that it has never been about slipshod work. In its correct usage that proverb never implies a negative connotation. It speaks to finding imaginative solutions when faced with new and difficult challenges often with limited resources. It is like channelling our ‘inner MacGyver’ when all we have is a penknife and two paperclips. These scientists worked in overdrive to create a solution to halt the spread of this rampant virus which threatens civilisation.
Yes, I have confidence in the credibility of professional scientists and university researchers who work in cloistered laboratories, whose main objectives are gaining knowledge understanding of how things work and finding solutions for the betterment of life on our planet. Their intentions are generally pure, not mingled with profits or marketing strategies. These are the people who worked selflessly over the past several months to bring to market vaccines that are deemed safe and effective by regulators all over the world to provide immunity to Covid-19.
In addition to my vast onstage ‘medical experience’, I am also a fan of the medical profession, having benefited tremendously from its services over the years. I have placed my life in the hands of these men and women over and over again and I am here still alive to sing their praises.
On the other hand, I deplore the large pharmaceutical companies we ‘affectionally’ refer to as ‘Big Pharma’. In my personal opinion they peddle their wares to the world at super-elevated prices with their main objective being to accrue massive profits. Universal healthcare is not on their agenda. They even go to great lengths to stifle initiatives in developing countries where governments are simply trying to bring affordable medicines to their ‘huddled masses’. But I believe the vaccines coming out of these operations have been driven by the thousands of scientists and researchers who have now staked their reputation on their safety and efficacy.
Of course, there were challenges in testing, but reports indicate that whenever there was a question of critical negative impacts of the trial vaccines the test were halted, as was the case of the AstraZeneca test in Brazil when one person died from what turned out to be an unrelated cause. There was no coverup.
For a whole year we, Christians, have been praying to God that he would demonstrate His awesome power and intervene in this situation. We now have three vaccines approved that can halt the spread of this plague which has covered the earth, yet some of my brothers and sisters are saying that they will not take the vaccine but will continue to put their faith in God for protection. My question to you is, what were you expecting? Did you think that God would send thunder and hail, and lightning flashes to zap all the spikes off the Covid microbes?
Of course, our God can work like that because nothing is impossible with Him, but more often than not He works in quietness and strength and in unassuming ways.
A story from the book of Kings comes to mind. It involves Elijah’s protegee Elisha. The commander of the army of the king of Syria was a leper named Naaman. He was sent to Elisha for healing. The prophet stayed inside his home and sent instructions to the commander that he should go and wash in the Jordan seven times. Naaman refused to follow those instructions because he felt the prophet should have come out to him and call on the name of his God, and wave his hand over the place, and heal the leprosy. He also said there were many better rivers in his country. His servants, however, called him out saying, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it? How much more then, when he says to you, ‘Wash, and be clean’?”
The question to you my fellow Christians who are still waiting on God to act is, what great something are you waiting for Him to do? I will go out on a limb here and say, He is not going to move by a big wind. He’s not going to do it by thunder or lightning. He is not going to do it by earthquake, or by fire. I believe this little jab in our arms, this little shot, is God’s way of helping us get through this great pandemic which threatens to change the way we live forever.
Unfortunately, there was no vaccine developed for the so called ‘Spanish Flu pandemic’ of 1918-1920 which swept the world after beginning in a small farm in Kansas, USA. By its fourth mutation it had become so deadly that some persons who displayed their first symptoms in the morning were dead by nightfall. In all, it infected over 500 million people, one quarter of the world’s population at the time, and killed between 50 and 100 million.
With the recent reports of new and more contagious and deadly strains of the COVID-19 being reported in UK, South Africa and Brazil, it is very possible that this is where we are now headed if this virus remains unchecked. My onstage ‘medical experience’ tells me these vaccines are our only shot to halt this killer virus in its tracks. Pun intended.
If you were a sniper on a mission and you had a ‘shot’ you would it take because the opportunity may never present itself again. We have a ‘shot’ now – so let’s just all roll up our sleeves and take it.
For those of my friends, and ‘countrymen’, who are still unconvinced, I don’t understand your reasoning, but I will be gladly standing in the firing line with all likeminded individuals as we take the shot to help protect you. No need to thank us because duty needs no thanks and, remember, greater love has no man than this, than a man laid down his life for his friends. I love you all.
