Israel was the first country in the world to vaccinate the majority of its population, and then it opened up for business as life went back to ‘normal.’
Now Israel is seeing a record number of new cases with two in every 150 Israelis testing positive for the virus. This is very high for a vaccinated country.
Given that Israel was the first country to vaccinate the majority of its population, it simply got complacent and put too much hope in just the vaccine, and ignored the fact that you need both the vaccine and safety protocols to combat COVID.
There are examples of many other countries who thought they had COVID-19 under control or had even defeated it, but it only came back much stronger in the form of variants with the chief one being the delta variant.
Bhutan has been the darling of the world press when it comes to tackling COVID-19, and that was all possible due to the good leadership of His Majesty The King under whom the government took early steps from closing our borders to having mandatory quarantines.
Bhutan also underwent many lockdowns to ensure that the virus did not spread.
It all entailed a lot of sacrifice, hard work and time to get to where we are today including His Majesty putting himself in harms way to secure our health.
However, all of that is now being put to danger by an increasingly carefree and careless attitude of the people.
Youths can be seen crowding bars and Karaoke without masks and having parties.
Not to be left behind, during the blessed rainy day many families rushed out in large numbers for picnics to the point that many of our regular picnic spots were crowded.
Even on a normal weekend, the children’s parks are crowded with children and parents not wearing masks or not wearing them properly.
Our streets and markets are full of people.
We must remember that variants like delta and others can cut through vaccinated populations and we still have a large number of unvaccinated population.
Even among the vaccinated, data from Israel show that the vaccinated elderly is at risk as their protection wears down after six months.
USA wanted to declare independence from the virus on 4th of July 2021, but cases and deaths are surging there, and this time, children are badly hit.
If we do not get cases from the community, then it will only mean more opening up and more economic activities, but cases from the community will hamper not only that but push us back to square one and endanger our collective health and lives.
It is time we put up our guard before we become another Israel.
Caution is the eldest child of wisdom
Victor Hugo