Good, if vaccination roll-out gets completed much sooner

This is because, for once, it now appears that we might not finally land in the much-dreaded Covid-19 mass deaths disaster we have always feared since the new wave broke out, or even earlier.

The first consignment of just over a million doses has already enabled the vaccination of thousands of people in Dar es Salaam and elsewhere, easing the pressure.

The new delivery is more directly part of the COVAX arrangement and its use of various institutions for both allocation arrangements and delivery.

Zanzibar had earlier received 100,000 doses of the Sinovac type of vaccine from China, while President Samia Suluhu Hassan was handed million-plus doses of the Janssen vaccine made by the giant pharmaceutical firm, Johnson&Johnson.

Bilateral and multilateral arrangements are at work, with diplomats working day and night to find niches of surplus vaccines for delivery to the world’s especially needy states.

Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation minister Liberata Mulamula made recent note of the new and massive delivery at a meeting in Addis Ababa with Tanzanians living outside the country.

These had sought to know steps the government was taking in the fight against Covid-19, including ensuring an adequate vaccine rollout.

Fears that it would be hard to access sufficient amounts of vaccines to meet national demand brought a few medical research outfits to lay out plans for making a local vaccine.

Of course, there would be need for some form of liaison with major producers whose vaccines have been approved by international agencies like the World Health Organisation.

Media reports in the country also indicate that vaccine skepticism is declining fast, as reports across the globe show that those who haven’t been vaccinated bear the brunt of new cases and severity of disease, while those with even one jab of vaccines that need two jabs are in relative protection.

Vaccines boost the body immunity level rather than begin rearranging genetic codes as some amply facilitated propagandists would want people to believe. Some were cynically wondering who or what people would be within weeks or months of taking the vaccine!

Fear and apprehension are declining in some Delta variant hotspots, as the massive upsurge of cases for around two or three weeks appears to have abated.

Although a policy shift is in place on whether to make data on Covid-19 cases, it is possible that no country has been able to exercise utmost frankness about the scale of the disease.

This is just as it is not always that people have admitted that this or that person died of AIDS, even during worst case scenario in the late 1980s and most of the 1990s.

But retaining a warrior culture where the prevalence of infectious diseases is considered demeaning would be, like it or not, most unfortunate – actually, tragic. So, let’s all heed expert advice for the good of us all.