DON’T BE A DATA POINT ON THE COVID DEATH CHART

By Akin Ojumu

It pains me deeply to write this. To even contemplate the possibility of this happening causes me great grief. There’s no joy to be found in death, especially not when it is someone you know that died. And I'm sick and tired of having to do this.

Femi Abegunde, the Deputy Chairman of Deloitte, West Africa, died of COVID-19 in the early hours of Monday, August 30, 2021, in the United Kingdom.

Femi was in the UK for his routine medical checkup when he contracted COVID. Shortly after getting infected, his condition deteriorated; he quickly developed respiratory distress and was admitted into the intensive care unit. Against all hopes, Femi did not make it, he succumbed to COVID-19.

What makes this hurt even more is the fact that Femi tried to do the needful and he wasn't someone who was flippant about his own health. He got vaccinated, albeit partially. He received one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in Nigeria prior to traveling to the UK. His plan was to take the 2nd dose as part of his medical checkup.

Unfortunately, COVID is no respecter of our timelines, well-laid plans, good intentions, and convenience. The virus got Femi before he was able to complete the full dose of the vaccine.

As devastating as Femi’s passing is to me personally - Femi was family - this sad turn of event presents a learning moment for the vaccine skeptics and COVID doubters out there. Femi's death should be another warning to those tempting fate, risking their lives, and toying with COVID. This is not a virus to trifle with. If you fail to do what you ought to do to not get infected, and you fail to do it on time, sooner or later the virus will get you when you least expect it. And when it does, pain and suffering – and even death – is the result.

Therefore, I’m pleading with you all once again from the bottom of my heart. Don’t be a statistic. Refuse to be a dot on the graph of COVID infection. Don’t be a data point on the epidemiologist death chart. Be smart, be wise, be vaccinated.

Comments

  1. Dr good morning. From your medical experience, don't you know that COVID has senior uncles like cholera and others that kill within hours? What have you people done about it? How many times has a locked down been announced for a village because of that? Or is it that death by COVID is more important than death by other sicknesses?

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  2. COVID-19 is caused by a virus (SARS-CoV-2) while Cholera is caused by vibro cholerae, a bacteria.

    COVID is a pandemic (i.e., an outbreak of a disease that has spread across several countries or continents. It is basically an epidemic that has spread internationally and covers a wider geographic area.) Cholera has never caused a pandemic.

    The fact that COVID is spread when a sick person coughs or sneezes, and can the droplets can travel as far as 6 feet away, makes it more dangerous than many other diseases. If you breathe it in or swallow it, the virus can get into your body. Some people who have the virus don't have symptoms, but they can still spread the virus. So, it can spread rapidly worldwide.

    This is the reason why we are advised to wear face mask, maintain social distancing, and the lockdown measures were instituted. You don't need face mask, social distancing, or lockdowns to prevent the spread of cholera.

    Moreover, COVID-19 is a far more deadly disease than cholera. It has killed close to 4.5 million worldwide in less than 2 years.

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  3. Why haven't the scientists find the cure for hiv/aids, it's also across all continents

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  4. That's a good question you asked, Halimat. HIV/AIDS is actually my field and it is the area in which I work until COVID hit.

    To answer your question, you need to know that viruses are not all the same. They belong to different families, phylla, classes, and kingdoms. Even within the same family, phylum, class, and kingdom, vast differences still exist. The differences among viruses determine how well they spread, cause disease, and death. Likewise, the differences also determine how easily we can prevent, treat, and cure the diseases caused by the different viruses.

    For instance, a single change in a single spot in the structure of a virus can lead to huge alteration within that virus that makes it different from other members of the same family. That's why you have Alpha and Delta variants of the same coronavirus.

    HIV is different from Coronavirus. While HIV is a retrovirus, coronavirus belongs to the coronaviridae family. HIV is transmitted through human body fluids such as blood, semen, etc. Coronavirus is spread when a sick person coughs or sneezes, and the droplets can travel as far as 6 feet away. That’s why in the COVID pandemic, you are asked to wear face masks, stay 6 feet apart, and is also why we have lockdowns.

    Because of the differences in their structure and genetic makeup, the treatments for HIV and COVID are also different. HIV has been particularly difficult to treat because it is a far more elusive virus and also because of the part of the body which it infects. HIV primarily attacks the immune cells called CD4 cells. These are the very cells the body uses to fight off foreign invaders. HIV destroys the CD4 and renders the body defenseless. When you go for HIV test for instance, they not only measure the level of the HIV in your body (i.e., Viral Load) they also measure the level of your CD4 (i.e., CD4 count). In HIV infection, the viral load is high and the CD4 count is low.

    Let me assure you that scientists in the HIV field are working tirelessly to find a cure for HIV. They are hard at work exploring all available options and all possibilities. There have been many some advances and breakthroughs in the vaccine field, but we are yet to find a cure that works on large scale for everyone infected with HIV. What we do have now, however, are medications, (called Antiretroviral Therapies or ART), that allow people infected with HIV to live long, normal and productive lives. Gone are the days when HIV was a certain death sentence. But these HIV medications don't cure HIV, they just suppress the virus in the body to a level where they can become undetectable in the blood when you do HIV test. But we won't stop until we find a cure.

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  5. They probably have the man that died fake vaccine in Nigeria. Nothing works in Nigeria. A country with that amount of wealth.

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  6. There are 2 types of COVID-19 vaccines being administered to the Nigerian public.

    1. The AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine (~4 million doses donated by COVAX

    COVAX (COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access) is a worldwide initiative aimed at equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines directed by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (or GAVI), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and the World Health Organization (WHO). COVAX coordinates international resources to enable low-to-middle-income countries equitable access to COVID-19 tests, therapies, and vaccines. There are about 165 countries – representing 60% of the human population – participating in COVAX.

    2. Nigeria also received about 4 million doses of the Moderna Vaccine from the Government of the United States.

    To say that there are fake COVID-19 vaccines in Nigeria is false. Likewise, it isn’t true that anyone has died as a result of taking the COVID-19 vaccine in Nigeria. The available COVID-19 vaccines in Nigeria are genuine, safe, and effective; and they will save your live.

    COVID-19 is a deadly enough virus, we do not want to put people’s lives in even greater danger by being purveyor of rumors and conspiracy theories. Let us all be careful about the kinds of information we share and disseminate.

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  7. May we know why there had not been vaccines for SARS-COV1 or MSARS but there hurriedly were vaccines for SARS-COV2? Why had all concerns by some other scientists against the vaccine brushed aside as CONSPIRACY THEORIES? Science is about knowledge and its application, and no one has it all!

    ReplyDelete
  8. The SARS outbreak of 2003 was short-lived, and public health containment procedures and coordinated responses proved effective in preventing further spread of the disease. Altogether, more than 8,000 people were documented to have been infected with SARS-CoV and over 800 died.

    The total number of confirmed MERS-CoV infection cases reported globally is over 2,500 with nearly 900 associated deaths. 80% of the cases occurred in Saudi Arabia.

    In contrast to SARS and MERS, close to 220 million people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 globally and of those nearly 5 million have died. What that tells you is that SARS-CoV-2 is far more transmissible and fatal than SARS and MERS.

    Researchers began working on developing vaccines for SARS and MERS right after they were discovered in 2003 and 2012, respectively. None of the SARS vaccines ever made it past the first stages of development and testing, in large part because the virus disappeared. One MERS vaccine (MVA-MERS-S) successfully completed a phase 1 clinical trial in 2019.

    The messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, the vaccine technology being used for the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines) have been studied before for flu, Zika, rabies, and cytomegalovirus (CMV).

    As soon as the genetic code became available for SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19), scientists began designing the mRNA for the vaccine, which provides instructions for cells to build the unique spike protein for SARS-CoV-2.

    It is true that science is about knowledge and its application. However, there is a huge difference between a good faith quest for knowledge and a deliberate effort to mislead and deceive by spreading conspiracy theories that have no scientific basis.

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  9. Hi Doctor, your friend died from the fake vaccine he got from Goddammed Nigeria. I can never trust any medicine sold or distributed in Nigeria.

    ReplyDelete

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