With COVID-19 becoming endemic, people need to exercise practical reason when deciding how best to live with the lurking presence of the virus, just like they do with dengue and influenza, says respiratory specialist Dr Ong Kian Chung.
For three years, Singapore, along with the rest of the world, battled a disease that has killed 6.9 million people globally. That is more than the total population of Singapore.
That most of the survey participants do not deem COVID-19 to currently pose a significantly high health risk is hardly surprising. Their response is quite expected given that COVID-19 restriction rules have been eased, and business and leisure activities are almost back to pre-pandemic levels. Scientific knowledge deals with matters of necessity whereas practical wisdom is about human concerns that are open to deliberation.Commentary: COVID-19 vaccine deaths a reminder that benefits of vaccination must outweigh risks of side effects
Thus, it seems that many people are in a quandary when considering whether to get COVID-19 booster shots. For instance, a 2021 study showed that persons with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease , a common chronic lung disorder, face more than four times higher risk of hospitalisation, 35 per cent higher chance of intensive care unit admission, and 2.5 times higher death rate if they contract COVID-19 compared to individuals without COPD.
Most of the patients I treated in the ICU did not take the recommended vaccinations although they were in the high-risk medically vulnerable category. As such patients progressively worsened despite maximal support, the question: “Can all this be prevented?” quite naturally arises.Risk-benefit considerations remain the norm in medicine through the decades; there are no absolutes in the discipline of medicine.
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