Carla DiBello On The Optimism Surrounding The Vaccine
“Calculated risks are what take us to the next level. This is no different…”
Vaccines are a touchy subject as we all have our own relationship with them, often based on different backgrounds and lifestyle. They are a personal topic in many ways, but they are also, by nature, a collective action. Before the pandemic, I almost never got vaccines – but when it came to Covid, I made an exception. This is my experience with it and why I chose to get it.
At the turn of the New Year, I got a call saying that the vaccine was available. After doing my own research and deliberating the pros and cons for almost two weeks, I decided to go ahead with it due to my close working contact with so many high-risk individuals, not to mention upcoming essential business travel to Saudi Arabia.
The decision to take the vaccine wasn’t easy for me. While I have friends and colleagues who get vaccines regularly, going ahead with a vaccine gave me pause. With so much misinformation and new information coming out on a daily basis, staying on top of the details felt overwhelming. Yet with more friends and family contracting the virus as it spread, getting the vaccine became less about myself and more of something I needed to do to protect those around me.
Carla DiBello pens down a note on how getting the vaccine has given her a new sense of optimism for the future
When my own father contracted Covid-19, the virus became intensely real and very personal. It was both difficult and agonizing to try to be there for him throughout his illness. I couldn’t do so many things I would have normally done to comfort and care for him. In many ways, it is just as painful, if not more so, to be unable to care for loved ones in pain than to be sick yourself. After my father contracted Covid, I had another scare with a friend who ended up in the hospital on a ventilator for 17 days. He was none of the at-risk demographics. He was young, healthy, didn’t drink, and had no underlying conditions. I spoke with him a few weeks after he had returned home from the hospital. His description of his experience was humbling. It made me realise that no matter who we are or what our medical history is, we are all at risk.
Being new to vaccine territory, I called my contacts at various Biotech companies to get their insight on which vaccine was best. I made my decision to get the vaccine when my contact said bluntly, “The truth is that which vaccine you go with is not important. The side effects for Covid are far worse.”
While we don’t know everything about the vaccines just yet, it’s also true that we also don’t know everything about long-term consequences of getting Covid. Yes, there are the horror stories we have all heard. But there are also the consequences yet to come, such as long-term damage many people may have to live with or spend years recovering from. For example, more and more research is pointing to long-term impairment such as brain and neurological damage, reportedly occurring in as many as up to one in seven patients. When you factor this into the equation, getting the vaccine really does feel far less risky than contracting Covid.
I was concerned about how I would feel after the shot, but the only side effect was a sore arm that lingered for a few days. I waited 20 minutes after the injection to make sure I didn’t have any reactions, and that was that. I was back to work the following day as though nothing had happened, but with far less anxiety and a reinvigorated sense of confidence in my safety – something I didn’t realise I had been missing for almost a year now.
We can scare ourselves out of anything if we think about it long enough. Yet almost all of us get in cars every single day. We hop on planes without a second thought. Everything is a risk in life. Calculated risks are what take us to the next level, and the vaccine is no different.
“One step closer to the next chapter…My body, My choice #PfizerVaccine” notes Carla in her Instagram post.
Getting the vaccine has also given me a new sense of optimism for the future. There is new energy amongst those who have been vaccinated. It has even become a greeting amongst those who have gotten it, signalling respect. That line from Amanda Gorman’s poem, The Hill We Climb, rings true in so many ways. ‘And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it.’ It applies to beating this virus. It may feel as though we are all still in the dark right now, but it is ours to overcome together. The light is coming.
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s March 2021 Issue
