How Desperate Do We Need A Vaccine?
- Written by Paul The Freedom Journalist
- In Biblical Faith & Prophecy, Economic Warning
As the numbers of COVID-19 infection and death mount across the world, many countries are scrambling to develop drug and vaccine in hope to cure the disease. Putting all differences aside, this seems to be a common goal of humanity right now because that is the only hope for things to be back to “normal” again (or at least close to). Some argue that enough damages had been done so the pre-COVID19 “normal” is already history. Nevertheless, I am sure all of us would much rather have a working vaccine ASAP. At the very least, it would not only prevent people from contracting the virus, but also remove people’s fear and restore consumers’ confidence, which is an important step for this struggling economy and people’s lives to be back on its feet. This is especially true for the United States where 70% of its GDP (Gross Domestic Product) were consumer spending.
But let’s not get too optimistic, another very important aspect about vaccine is how fast can we get one. If we can get one working tomorrow as opposed to getting one working 5 years from now, we will have much higher chance of getting back to our earlier forms because of the fewer permanent damages. Given COVID-19 is a very contagious virus that can spread quickly, there is also this epidemiological route of herd immunity where if almost the entire population has the immunity then it provides indirect protection to those who aren’t immune to the disease. Because the route of herd immunity in theory will require most of the population to have the immunity, in other words, to contract the virus and develop antibody from it, it will likely result in massive casualty as not everyone can survive. Some would refer this simply as “natural selection” because the healthy ones will likely remain while the older people and individuals with pre-existing health conditions will probably not make it. From the humane standpoint, this is definitely a no-go and by no means do I suggest that any countries or leaders should be taking this approach. However, we all know that COVID-19 virus is highly contagious. If left uncontrolled, it can grow exponentially like detonation of a nuclear bomb. Within a matter of weeks or even days, most of the population could contract the virus. The approach that most countries take right now is to preserve lives by implementing aggressive lockdowns and social distancing. The aim is to slow the spread of the virus so the infections wouldn’t grow exponentially (hopefully just linear which is what we have been observing over the last several weeks with approximately 30,000 infections and 2000 deaths daily). But the whole purpose of social distancing should be so that we could get a vaccine in place. If a vaccine is going to take too long anyway, most of the population would probably end up contracting the virus and develop herd immunity by then. In that case, wouldn’t that make the whole economic we went through as a result of lockdowns and social distancing all render useless? So to answer the question, HOW DESPERATE DO WE NEED A VACCINE? It is simple. WE NEED IT NOW OR NEVER.
With this kind of desperation, you would think that if there is a pandemic with a known vaccine, people wouldn’t hesitate to get it. I mean, what do you stand to lose? Is that really the case?
COVID-19 Drug And Vaccine Desperation
With mounting deaths and a growing number of unemployment that is already on par with the 1930 Great Depression, both people and government are dying to find out what types of drugs can be beneficial in treating the COVID-19 patients. In March, a French doctor announced that he used Chloroquine, a drug normally used to fight malaria, on certain patients with COVID-19 and found it to be effective on 78 out of the 80 patients he treated that they were able to return homes within 5 days. This report even caught the attention of our own President Trump that he couldn’t wait to share it to the public on his Twitter:
“HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains – Thank you! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents) ……“
Not only did he just share it on Twitter, he actually requested FDA (Food and Drug Administration) to approve its immediate use. And guess what, FDA responded with an emergency approval a few days later. In a news report by lifesitenews, it says,
“The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued emergency authorization for experimental coronavirus treatments using chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drugs that have been supported by President Donald Trump.”
It has also been reported by NorthJersey.com that despite having doubts, many New Jersey hospitals and doctors are using malaria drugs out of desperation. The mindset of it has been, “we don’t know if it will work, but heck, people are dying, and we don’t have anything better so why not use it to see if it helps?”
Besides just healthcare providers using it out of desperation, people were also seen to taking matter into their own hands. A news report from LiveScience shows an Arizona couple poisoned themselves after self-medicating chloroquine.
Finally, according to an article from TheWeek, the drama of hydroxychloroquine ended with a nationwide study that has been submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine confirming that the anti-malaria drug does not really benefit COVID-19 patients.
Here the whole purpose of discussing this hydroxychloroquine drama isn’t to blame it on anyone, as mainstream media would do on our President. Instead, it is intended to show that people are desperate for a vaccine or literally any drugs that can provide any sort of relief from this virus. Some are even willing to risk lives and put hope on an unverified drug.
Another 12-18 Months Before A COVID-19 Vaccine Becomes Available
So how long will it take for the vaccine to be available? Based on another article from LiveScience, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said an COVID-19 vaccine could take 12 to 18 months to develop, test, and approve for public use, and this estimate already takes into consideration the enormous pressure to starve off the pandemic and a few shortcuts willingly allowed by science and regulatory agencies. New vaccines typically take years to get approval, so 12 to 18 months will be considered unrealistic for any other vaccines.
If 12 to 18 months is really the fastest we can do, I think we could be in deep trouble. All the lockdown and social distance measures we implemented were only meant to slow the spread of the virus so that we can get a vaccine in place. If by then most of the population already contract and grow some immunity to it then what is the point of having these painful lockdown and social distancing measures that triggered the economic crisis in the first place? If you are interested in knowing about how COVID-19 triggers the economic crisis, please be sure to check out our article Is COVID-19 The Cause Or Trigger To The Economic Crisis? Now, don’t get this all wrong. This isn’t saying we should flat out going for herd immunity and abandon all social distancing measures completely. Social distancing is beneficial in limiting the pandemic and from the personal hygiene standpoint, it is a very good practice. In fact, I have heard many people whose asthma and other health problems went away recently as a result of social distancing and better hygiene practice. But at some point, we should get a good grip about when we will be entering the herd immunity territory (i.e. how much of the population already contract the virus and develop immunity) to understand timeline requirement for an effective vaccine.
In my opinion, another very important factor to consider is that social distancing in the United States will likely not be as effective as countries like Taiwan and South Korea. These countries have been so effective in containing the virus because they were literally able to mass produce masks overnight and make them available to every citizen before making it mandatory to wear them in public. Unfortunately in the US, it is hard to achieve even one of these because for one, we are no longer a manufacturing country anymore. 70% of our GDP is based on consumer spending. We buy our everyday necessity stuff from countries like China for quite some time. In times like these, it is a joke that our President had to invoke Defense Production Act to mobilize a few masks and ventilators here and there to save its citizens. Second, I can’t imagine how making it mandatory to wear a mask will fair in the US. It will most likely get tied up a few years in the court for government overreach and privacy-related lawsuits. I am not saying government control and privacy violation aren’t legitimate concerns. They are, but the whole point here is that the social distancing measures in US can’t never be as successful as these other countries, therefore our time clock to get a vaccine in place also needs to be a lot sooner.
R0 (R naught): Disease Contagious Measure
One of the most important measures in gauging an infectious disease is R0 (R naught), also known as the reproduction number. It is really a mathematical measure that describes how contagious an infectious disease is. R0 is an unitless number that shows how easily it can reproduce itself (i.e. infect a new person). In essence, it tells you the average number of healthy people who will contract the disease when come in contact with a person carrying the disease. So a disease with the R0 value of 2 means one carrier can transmit to 2 more people on average.
It should be noted that these values don’t have to be whole numbers (like 1,2,3, …, and etc.), they can also be numbers with decimal points (like 0.4, 2.58, 3.61, …, and etc.) because they are obtained as an average from all the reference data available. And to better understand the severity of these numbers, they are usually grouped under three categories: Not Contagious, Contagious, and Highly Contagious as in the following table,
According to a study published in Emerging Infectious Diseases, COVID-19 actually has an R0 value of 5.7. Such a high R0 will only need 2-3 days to double its infection, and you would need 82% of the population to have immunity (via either vaccination or herd immunity) to stop it from spreading further. This is one heck of a nasty virus.
The Worst Pandemic In Human History With A Proven Vaccine
While the whole world is being severely disrupted by the COVID-19 Pandemic, many people wonder where COVID-19 stands in the list of most horrific pandemics in human history. Although we aren’t even close to being out of the woods with COVID-19, some already consider it to be on the top five along with Black Death, also known as The Plague, in the 14th century and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic (Spanish Flu). However, none of them can come close to being the worst pandemic in human history.
There is actually a pandemic in the world that makes COVID-19 look like a walk in the park and it has been going on for thousands of years and never gone away. In terms of the contagious measure and death toll, this pandemic has the most fearsome numbers possible. It has an R0 = 10,000,000 and the resulting death rate is 100%. It is so contagious to the point that you don’t even have to be physically near the infected people to catch the disease, it can also spread through reading their opinions on the newspapers, watching them on tv, and even just surfing on the web. So believe it or not, all of us have contracted this disease. Some may ask, “how come we don’t feel it? Isn’t it going to be painful?” Well, I am sure you heard about asymptomatic carriers in COVID-19 pandemic. Asymptomatic carriers are infected people that display no signs or symptoms. Unlike COVID-19 where only a portion of infected people are asymptomatic, all of us who contracted this worst possible pandemic are asymptomatic. We don’t actually exhibit any symptoms of sickness and it isn’t physically painful either. Just when you think that this pandemic isn’t all that bad, please don’t forget that the death rate is 100%. Not a single infected person can be spared from this. “What are you talking about? How come we don’t notice people dying around like COVID-19?”, Please just hold on……
What makes this pandemic situation even more ridiculous is that it actually has a proven vaccine available. With the ways people are willing to risk their lives or even self-medicate unproven drugs for COVID-19 having a death rate of less than 10%, you would think people will be willing to try out this vaccine for a pandemic that has 100% death rate. I mean what do you stand to lose. You are dying anyway. Well we are wrong. People are ignorant and skeptical about it. In some situations, they even make fun of this vaccine. Some more extreme people will even get angry at this vaccine.
So what exactly is this worst pandemic in human history? You should’ve guessed it by now. It is the SIN Pandemic. According to the Bible, here are some characteristics about this pandemic we all should know about:
1. Pandemic Origin
Unlike COVID-19 where the origin is still a “mystery”. If you ever wonder about the origin of sin, 1 John 3:8 tells us about it very clearly. The source of sin is Satan and it has been around since the beginning of time.
“He who does what’s sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the son of God appeared was to destroy devil’s work” – 1 John 3:8
From this verse, we can see that sin is the work of Satan to make people to walk in the opposite direction of God towards ultimate destruction.
2. Highly Infectious
Sin Pandemic is highly infectious. It is no exaggeration that it deserves to have an R0 value of 10,000,000. As I mentioned earlier, this isn’t a disease that attacks people’s physical health; instead, it attacks people’s heart and mind. So it does not need physical proximity to be infectious, it can infect people via virtually any means of communications and it is so infectious that Bible described to be like a roaring lion in 1 Peter 5:8
“Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” – 1 Peter 5:8
Being hunted by a lion as a prey is like a situation where if you get your guard down for just a little bit, boom you are the next victim.
3. No One Can Escape
In the end, because this pandemic is too contagious, nobody can really escape from contracting this disease on his or her own power. This is why the Bible says in Romans 3:23,
“For all have sinned and fall short of God’s glory” – Romans 3:23
Some people may not accept the notion that we are all sinners. They think they are law-abiding citizens who never broke a law, never killed someone, never did anything unlawful. I mean that is very good. You are already better than a lot of people. However, that really only shows you never committed a crime, you are not a criminal, and you are all good in the standard of human laws. What about in the standard of our Almighty God? How do you think you would do? In Matthew 5:27-28, it says
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery’. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart” – Matthew 5:27-28
Also it says in 1 John 3:15
“Anyone who hates his brothers is a murderer” – 1 John 3:15
You might think you never murder someone or commit adultery, but God’s standard is much higher. If you ever thought about it, you’ve already done it. The human laws can only judge behaviors, but God’s standard judges the heart. As it describes clearly in Romans 3:23, SIN is when we fall short of God’s glory, i.e. God’s standard as well. So have you ever looked at women lustfully? Have you ever hated someone? Have you ever lied? If you answer “NO” to all of these question, you are already lying. None of us are perfect. We all fall short of God’s standard. We are all sinners. We fall victim to this pandemic.
4. 100% Death Rate
Unlike COVID-19 where the death rate is less than 10%, SIN pandemic has a death rate of 100%. But how come we don’t see dead bodies piling up? Well, it is a lot more fundamental than that. We don’t die right away, but the only reason death even exists in this world is because of SIN. So if you ever want to prove to people that you aren’t a sinner, then just prove that you will never die. That is why it says in Romans 6:23
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus Our Lord” – Romans 6:23
The “wages” here can be understood as the “price to pay”, or the “consequence”. In other words, the consequence of sin is death. We are all sinners, we all contracted this disease, and we all need to face death one day.
5. Jesus Is The True Vaccine
If I discuss how contagious and lethal of this disease without providing a solution, we’d all be very depressed and helpless. Fortunately, there is that one and only vaccine available, and that is Jesus Christ. In the two Scripture verses we read earlier, 1 John 3:8 and Romans 6:23, the latter parts discuss how Jesus is the solution to these horrific characteristics of the SIN Pandemic:
“He who does what’s sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the son of God appeared was to destroy devil’s work” – 1 John 3:8
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus Our Lord” – Romans 6:23
Jesus died on the cross to pay for the sins on our behalf. He then overcame death, the consequence of sin, through his resurrection three days after. His resurrection shows us He is the Lord of Life. And for those of us who believe and follow Him, we get to overcome death just like He did. Now that doesn’t mean our worldly body won’t be worn out and die. It will, just like Jesus died on the cross. Bible refers that first death as “sleeping”, but we get to avoid the “real” death, which is the external spiritual death.
“We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him” – 1 Thessalonians 4:14
“Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him” – Hebrews 9:27-28
How Can We Receive This Vaccine?
Now that we know Jesus is the vaccine of SIN Pandemic. How do we receive this vaccine? The process is very simple and straightforward as described in Romans 10:9
“That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” – Romans 10:9
You won’t have to go through the lengthy procedure to have your insurance carrier approve it. You can have it right away and it won’t cost you a single cent. So why wait? What do we have to lose? From the pure logic standpoint, if the vaccine does not work, we won’t lose anything more because we were screwed anyway. But what if the vaccine does work, what would you have missed out?
Thank you for reading. God bless you all!
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