This letter is a plea to everyone in Saskatchewan who has not been vaccinated against COVID-19. I urge you, please make the decision to get the shot. Do it for yourself, your family, your community. Do it so that we can end this pandemic and get back to some type of normal. I understand that a small percentage of you cannot get vaccinated, such as for a medical reason. This letter is for everyone else.
Our province is in serious trouble. We’re hitting the kind of COVID-19 records we don’t want: more than 600 new cases, more than 300 people in hospital, more than 60 people in intensive care, more than 700 people dead. We’re running out of ICU beds. Some adults with COVID-19 are using pediatric ICU beds. Little kids are being hospitalized with COVID-19. Doctors are on the verge of having to make awful decisions about who lives and who dies.
The worrisome part for you is that most of the persons who are getting COVID-19 are not fully vaccinated. And three-quarters of ICU patients are unvaccinated. For those of you who remain unvaccinated during this deadly fourth wave of the pandemic, your odds of getting COVID-19 have gone way up. So have the odds of becoming very ill, or ending up in hospital struggling to breathe, or even dying.
The evidence is clear that this has become a pandemic of the unvaccinated, who are six times more likely to test positive than someone who is fully vaccinated, and five times more likely to be hospitalized. It’s increasingly troubling to hear about COVID-19 tragedies that are preventable: people fighting for their lives in hospital, apologizing to their families for putting off vaccination; frightened patients who realize they’re actually going to die of COVID-19 and leave family members to cope without them; unvaccinated parents who wind up hospitalized along with their children; young adults dying in the prime of life, unvaccinated.
It need not happen. There is clear medical evidence that vaccines are highly effective in reducing the impact of COVID-19. In fact, they are the best tool we have. We desperately need more of you to step up and get vaccinated. Having as many people vaccinated as possible is our best hope for getting out of this pandemic and reclaiming our lives.
Please get vaccinated to protect yourself and your family. Even if you survived the virus, you could end up suffering from “Long COVID” symptoms such as fatigue, shortness of breath, and problems with concentration. The Delta variant is causing outbreaks in our schools and daycare centres; infected children can get very sick and can even end up in hospital. Get vaccinated to help keep young children safe until they become eligible for their own vaccine.
Get the vaccine as an act of kindness for your neighbours, some of whom are now waiting even longer for surgeries or organ transplants, and who might even die waiting. Consider vaccination as a way to honour exhausted doctors and nurses who have been doing their best under terrible conditions for far too many months. Do it so that we don’t have to close more emergency departments while health care resources are redirected to the COVID-19 crisis. Get vaccinated so that long-term care homes will no longer have to increase restrictions (and reduce quality of life), based on the local risk of COVID-19 transmission.
Nineteen months into this tragedy, the fact that there are still so many unvaccinated people in our province is causing unnecessary suffering and death. In the end, don’t we all want the same thing? Fewer people getting sick or dying? A return to normal, less stressful times? The pandemic no longer dominating our lives?
Please consider a COVID-19 vaccination as your opportunity to help us get there sooner. Your life – and the lives of the people you love – may well depend on it.
Therese Jelinski
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
