I won’t let my barber drag me into the ‘minefield’!

If there is any AI-based app screening all the texts published worldwide over the last one and a half years, the top-five most popular words would undoubtedly be “COVID-19”, “pandemic”, “vaccine”, “coronavirus” and, well, “mask”.

That’s my guess, not conclusions of research. The prevalence of the words is just omnipresent in media – the news about the contagious virus not only did not leave news channels and websites, but even did not diminish noticeably.

To me, at least.

In a way, it is disappointing – the promised “herd immunity” with 70 percent of local populaces jabbed is nowhere to be seen and the virus keeps sowing mistrust, jitteriness and even chaos.

The culprit now is the wildly transmissible Delta variant of the virus that originated in India.

No scientist can perhaps be sure that a nastier virus derived from the same coronavirus will not pop up somewhere and mow the world anew.

Sadly, COVID-19 vaccines are still inaccessible to swaths of the world population – vaccine inequality is an acute issue.

But with over a year and a half into the health crisis, even affluent countries are still being plagued by the virus and are bracing for a new spike in COVID-19 cases. 

As you know, some of them, and the Baltics too, have already started inoculating their people with a booster shot.

Frankly, I myself have gotten two jabs – I trust science, but I feel like bristling against receiving that booster shot. Just because I want to let my immune system get the protection job done!

And, well, if I have a third shot, can I be sure that there will not be a fourth, a fifth and a sixth?...I cannot. Can you?

Debating the topic of vaccination against COVID-19 is like walking in a minefield, so when with me still in the barber chair or on the massage table, my masseuse or barber wades into it,  I assume doing so giving in to the multiple ‘COVID-19 plot’ theories, I shut them down now right away: NO!

If they bring it up again, they won’t see me anymore. That’s it!

Let’s just face it: the topic is splitting societies and the wars of pro-vaxxers against anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers will rage on as long as the virus remains around.

The good news is that, as humankind, we will win the battle. How consoling it would be to know that it will happen sooner rather than later!