The other night, I was in an online chat with my yoga community and we were sharing some of our fears from the past year.  

One of the responses from someone in my community was that she was dealing with her friends who “drank the Kool-Aid of the COVID-19 vaccine.” When I read those words, I froze because I was triggered.

I felt my body tighten. I felt anger and irritation. I didn’t respond because, at the moment, I didn’t know how to. But, it got me thinking…hence, why I am writing this article.   

Anger is a manifestation of fear. This is proven to me over and over again—next time you get angry or see someone get angry, I challenge you to look at what is underneath that anger and I’m sure you will see fear. 

I am afraid of this virus. I am afraid of getting sick and I am afraid of many people dying—especially my loved ones.

I believe vaccination is the way out of this disease because “vaccinations against life-threatening diseases are one of the greatest public health achievements in history. Literally, millions of premature deaths have been prevented, and countless more children have been saved from disfiguring illness.”

I believe in preventing illness—I am a yoga teacher and know we can prevent and treat some illnesses with movement and nutrition. I also believe this is always the best place to start when we are treating or preventing disease. 

I am also a pharmacist and, in general, I think we take too many drugs in this country and we are much too fast to jump on the “easy” fix of drug therapy.  

But vaccines are preventative medicine.

We have been given the gift of being able to figure out how to outsmart viruses so they no longer make us sick in some cases. I believe that the development of vaccines is nature—it is our nature as human beings to want to help each other. Some of us are scientists and study viruses and figure out how to stimulate our immune systems to protect us from deadly viruses. 

It is a gift of disease prevention and I think we need to be thankful to these people who spend their lives developing lifesaving and disease preventing vaccines. 

I understand that some of us have lost faith in a medical system that has fallen prey to greed and, sometimes, is not in our best interest. But I also know most of us have the best intentions and actions when it comes to developing strategies for health care.

We can look to history as proof for all the good that has come from vaccine use. Diseases such as Polio, Tetnus and the flu, and hepatitis A and B (just to name a few) have been mostly eradicated due to vaccine development and use.  

Now, we are seeing in real-time that the people who have taken the Covid-19 vaccine are not getting sick and they are not dying. In the places where people do not have access to the vaccine or are refusing to receive the vaccine, people are filling the hospitals and dying.

I agree, maybe the development of this vaccine happened a little fast and people are also weary of a medical system that is sometimes not in our best interest. But, from my perspective as a health care worker in a busy New York City hospital (and as a patient), most of us are doing our best for the patients. 

We, as health care workers and scientists, are developing medicines because we want to help.  

I put my faith and great admiration into the scientists who have developed this lifesaving vaccine against Covid-19. I hope that, someday, the vaccine can be accessible to everyone around the world.

And, maybe, we can show those who are hesitant about the vaccine that being vaccinated is better than being dead.