SARA BERNARD

“I'm all about Risk Man­age­ment. It’s how I live my life! It's how I was trained and it's my ex­per­tise as a Chem­i­cal and Process En­gi­neer. Risk Man­age­ment is about con­sid­er­ing the sever­i­ty of an in­ci­dent hap­pen­ing com­bined with the like­li­hood of that event oc­cur­ring. So al­though you can die in a plane crash, the like­li­hood of that hap­pen­ing is pret­ty low so if you won an all-ex­pense paid trip to Dubai most of us wouldn’t think twice about hop­ping on the flight!

I re­mem­ber hav­ing a heat­ed ar­gu­ment with my moth­er about eight years ago at the be­gin­ning of what was sup­posed to be a fun fam­i­ly trip to To­ba­go. I’d just strapped my six-month-old in­to the car seat, which of course I’d in­clud­ed as an add-on when I booked the rental car on­line. About five min­utes in­to the dri­ve my daugh­ter start­ed to cry. We checked on her and noth­ing was wrong. So I left her in the car seat. She amped up the deci­bels and my mom in­sist­ed that we take her out of the car seat and com­fort her. But to me it was sim­ple! The risk to my daugh­ter in a car crash with­out a car seat is way big­ger than any dis­com­fort she’d feel by be­ing in a car seat. It’s a no-brain­er! So I nev­er com­pro­mise on car seat use.

So when it came to get­ting the COVID-19 vac­cine it was an­oth­er no-brain­er. All of my clos­est fam­i­ly have co­mor­bidi­ties in­clud­ing hy­per­ten­sion and di­a­betes. So if my hus­band or par­ents got coro­n­avirus the like­li­hood of their cas­es be­ing se­vere was high. So again, it was re­al­ly sim­ple: the risk of death or hos­pi­tal­iza­tion to me, my chil­dren, my hus­band and my par­ents by not tak­ing the vac­cine is much high­er than that of any com­pli­ca­tions or side-ef­fects from tak­ing the vac­cine.

It was a re­al­ly sim­ple risk man­age­ment de­ci­sion for me, and I chose to be vac­ci­nat­ed!”

NICOLE GALT

“First of all, it was to en­sure that if by chance my hus­band or I con­tract­ed the virus, that we would not be hos­pi­tal­ized, and sec­ond­ly, that we would not be car­ri­ers of this virus to the detri­ment of oth­ers.

I have to ad­mit, we were a bit hes­i­tant at first with con­flict­ing news all around us and giv­en that my hus­band has co-mor­bidi­ties. How­ev­er, af­ter do­ing our own re­search, we re­alised that it was tru­ly a safer op­tion to be vac­ci­nat­ed.

We strong­ly feel that if you are ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed, there is a bet­ter chance of pro­tect­ing your­self, from hos­pi­tal­iza­tion and pro­tect­ing those around you, es­pe­cial­ly your loved ones.

Now our dai­ly lives are less re­strict­ed armed with knowl­edge that be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed we can op­er­ate more freely even with the im­posed re­stric­tions.

We are both re­tired and had hoped to trav­el. How­ev­er, this dream was put on hold, pend­ing the re­sump­tion of trav­el abroad, and the ac­cep­tance of coun­tries to al­low us en­try and be able to re­turn to our home­land feel­ing se­cure that we could reen­ter.

Al­most two years have been lost for us. The year 2021 marks the sec­ond year of this new nor­mal in which hope­ful­ly, we will be­gin to see the pos­i­tive im­pact of the goals to­wards herd im­mu­ni­ty, and we en­cour­age read­ers to con­sid­er the threat to fam­i­ly and friends by choos­ing to not vac­ci­nate.

There is recog­nised da­ta pub­lished which sug­gests that most of the deaths have been caused by not tak­ing the vac­cine and yet, we still have per­sons who are very fear­ful of the vac­cine. We must find ways and means to get this mes­sage across to those per­sons.

Let us all play our part in get­ting our coun­try back to some lev­el of nor­mal­cy.”

SHAZ­AHRA KHAN

“Vac­ci­na­tion can mean the dif­fer­ence be­tween life and death. I am a moth­er, daugh­ter, grand­daugh­ter, sis­ter and friend. Many of my friends and fam­i­ly have dif­fer­ent med­ical is­sues which can prove to be fa­tal for them should they con­tract the COVID-19 virus. I refuse to be the rea­son I do not have them around any­more. I al­so en­cour­age those who could get vac­ci­nat­ed to do so. We are all ful­ly aware that be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed does not mean that you are to­tal­ly im­mune to get­ting the virus, how­ev­er it would mean that your body has a chance to fight it.

I al­so be­lieve that vac­ci­na­tion is the on­ly way that life would re­turn to some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy. This virus has rocked the world to its very core, eco­nom­i­cal­ly and oth­er­wise. Mass vac­ci­na­tion is the on­ly way to re­cov­er from this and whilst I un­der­stand that the de­ci­sion to be­come vac­ci­nat­ed is a per­son­al choice, I wish more peo­ple would make the de­ci­sion to. The ques­tion about the short time as it re­lates to the cre­ation of this vac­cine is of­ten asked and the an­swer is sim­ple…mod­ern med­i­cine. Isn’t that won­der­ful? I am proud to live in a time where the blue­print to save my life and the life of those I love, was read­i­ly avail­able and was used to cre­ate this vac­cine.

Noth­ing about to­mor­row with re­gards to the COVID-19 virus is cer­tain how­ev­er we can do our part to shape what sort of fu­ture we would like for our­selves and our fam­i­lies by get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed. I got vac­ci­nat­ed be­cause it means the dif­fer­ence be­tween life and death for my­self and those I love.

For you and your loved ones, get vac­ci­nat­ed to­day!”