All Cancer Patients Should Get the COVID-19 Vaccine As Soon As Possible
As the cost of epidemic prevention grows ever higher and the fight drags on, the public will grow ever numb to the epidemic's course, and future prevention will grow ever harder. The present is the last chance for the unvaccinated to get the COVID-19 vaccine and resist the virus. So I hope all cancer patients who have not yet been vaccinated get vaccinated as soon as possible; there can be no more delay.
Vaccine conspiracy theories are running rampant, and many self-media outlets and individuals are spreading all sorts of them; some fellow patients have believed them. This means that many cancer patients are still stubbornly refusing vaccination, which is very dangerous. For even though our country pursues dynamic zero-COVID, in another quarter the probability of ordinary citizens catching COVID will be far higher than now. As the virus mutates further, dealing with it will only grow harder, while most healthy people's enthusiasm for cooperating in the fight will decline further. So as time goes on, our goal of zero will grow ever harder to achieve, and vaccination is the best means of protecting ourselves.
I am confident our government will, as always, do its utmost to prevent the epidemic and keep it from expanding, in order to protect the health and safety of our citizens. I admire and support our government's dynamic zero-COVID policy, which is highly responsible toward people's lives. But the virus, like humans, is intelligent; none of the prevention measures we currently use can be called perfect. The virus will evolve greater transmissibility, break through our various defenses, and grow ever harder to control. It is dangerous to complacently assume the virus will mutate into something ever less lethal; the latest research shows that Omicron causes severe illness and death as well.
Moreover, even a common, supposedly low-harm infectious disease like influenza can kill cancer patients. Before the epidemic, every year I watched some cancer patients die of flu. Omicron is far more transmissible than flu and has a higher case fatality rate, especially among the unvaccinated. So vaccination is very important for cancer patients, and the time is now. Do not grow complacent or rely on luck just because our case numbers are falling at the moment; our prevention line can be breached at any time, anyone can be infected, and vaccination is the best means of lowering the fatality rate.
More than three thousand of my WeChat contacts are cancer patients or their families; about five hundred patients have asked me whether they could be vaccinated, and I have told them all that they can, and encouraged them to do so. Among the vaccinated cancer patients I have seen so far, not a single one has died from vaccination, so the risk is not high. But some patients firmly believe all sorts of bizarre vaccine conspiracy theories; these patients refuse vaccination, and their risk is very high.
The vaccine cannot prevent infection 100%, but Hong Kong's statistics show the case fatality rate among the vaccinated is only one-eighteenth of that among the unvaccinated, so vaccination is definitely effective at preventing severe illness and death. Some vaccine conspiracy theorists argue by logic that since the vaccine cannot prevent infection, it cannot prevent death either. This shows they know nothing of science; medicine is an experimental science, and conclusions are not reached by logical deduction alone. Real-world data from abroad, Hong Kong, and Shanghai very convincingly prove the vaccine's role in preventing severe illness and death.
Our government upholds dynamic zero-COVID to protect citizens' health, and this is a benevolent policy that benefits the people. But it inevitably feeds the complacency of some citizens, who think that under dynamic zero-COVID the risk of not vaccinating is also low; this mindset is very dangerous. As the virus mutates into something ever harder to deal with, patients who do not vaccinate now may be infected and become severe cases in the next peak wave.