Health

Six reasons why Hongkongers should jump at a Covid-19 jab


It has been more than a year and two months since Covid first poked its spiky self into our already complicated lives, fellow Hongkongers. Relative to most of the world, we have gotten off lightly, but it’s still been a morass of virus waves, leading to restrictions and closures. Some of us haven’t seen our families in other countries since then, others have had to quarantine, and still others live in a state of constant paranoia and panic due to fears of being separated from their kids, pets, or because we simply don’t want to contract the dreaded lurgy. Most of all, we can never forget: people have lost their lives.

At least 5 million of us are a gilded population eligible for the vaccine here in Hong Kong. Talking to friends and others around me, it’s easy to see that there is a lot of waiting and seeing going on from the start. Only 529,400 residents have taken their first doses in Hong Kong as of Thursday.

File photo: Tim Reckmann, via Flickr.

The waiting and watching is not incomprehensible. The reasons I have heard are distrust in the vaccines (ranging from fear of side-effects to what’s in them), distrust in the logistics surrounding the vaccine delivery, and complacency, because taking the vaccine does not feel urgent. For example, “I can’t travel anyway, because there’s a three week quarantine on the way back,” or “We hardly have Covid here anyway, what’s the rush?”



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