The Jab War

 The Jab War

I have difficulty believing what I am hearing about the vaccine war between Europe and the UK. Is it a residual animosity from Brexit? I feel we, the rich nations, so to speak, are suffering from tunnel vision, in this case, turned inwards, so that we only see our needs.

A great part of the world has no chance of getting their people vaccinated any time soon. And, even if they get a supply from the WHO, will the vaccines reach the remote villages in Rwanda or Burkina Faso? I doubt even the remote villages in vaccine-rich India will get vaccinated, given how separated they are from the life of the country. I hope I am wrong.

I grew up in the war years --when Cholera, Bubonic plague and Small pox were endemic in Keralam. In front of my home was an abandoned, half- built house -- the owner was in Singapore and could not get back to India because of the war raging in Malaya. A family of beggars occupied the veranda. There was a pond in the compound providing them with water -- I learned my swimming in it, using dry coconuts as floats -- and they cooked on stones abandoned by the builders. Two years later an epidemic of plague killed most of them, until just two young men were left. The corpses were collected by the Municipal waste-van, and the men walked away.

Achamma, my paternal grandmother, filled coconut shells with cow-dung and lined the walkway to our house. She believed it kept the evil spirits and all infections at bay. The local Council sent the vaccinators around and they jabbed us with pen-like objects with a circular serrated edge. It was quite painful. Achamma had lost her eldest son to smallpox when he was twenty years old, and she was determined to protect us -- with cow-dung.

When Cholera happened, we started boiling our water from the well. In spite of all that, many in the poorer parts of the town still died. We held our breaths, said our prayers, and waited for the devastation to end.

Much as we do now? Except for the cow-dung. If there is a time to show solidarity, it is now. Yet, we squabble and threaten and make silly noises. Europe threatens us with a vaccine blockade. We forget that our world is now one -- we cannot really isolate ourselves very effectively.

I feel grace has absconded from our lives and a reminder is appropriate. If all of us start squabbling and grabbing, we are irredeemable. Our humanity is sacrificed to our selfishness. We need to regain our perspective of how minuscule we are in the larger picture.