The Will County Health Department and Community Health Center will be holding a special COVID-19 vaccine drive on Saturday, June 26th at Hubert H. Humphrey Middle School in Bolingbrook, IL from 10 AM until 2 PM Central Standard Time (CST). This drive will be a final push to fulfill US President Joe Biden's goal of having 70% of the nation to have at least one shot of the coronavirus vaccine.
This vaccine drive is being dedicated to Dykota Morgan. Morgan was a fifteen year old teenage girl who unfortunately lost her life to COVID-19 in early May of this year. She was perfectly healthy and played basketball and softball at Bolingbrook High School. Normally, the coronavirus does not affect people under the age of 20, but her life was unexpectedly taken away.
If you have not been vaccinated, then please get vaccinated soon. Although the percentage of death is around 1% after a person contracts COVID-19, what if you are not a part of the 99% that would survive? Taking the vaccine ensures that you are 100% guaranteed from having severe complications from COVID-19.
As a nation, 52% of Americans have taken at least one shot of the vaccine with 42% fully vaccinated. That means that we are millions of people away from reaching the 70% goal by Independence Day.
The statistics are even worse in Will County. Only about one-third of the people residing in Will County have at least one shot of the coronavirus vaccine. The strange thing about this statistic is that so many people complained about the lockdown and about wearing masks last year, but these same murmurers are the same ones that will not take the vaccine. Too many people live in America now that choose to live contrary to common sense.
Nevertheless, the reluctance remains about taking the vaccine. In the African-American community, the biggest obstacle is the lack of trust for the American medical system. For example, the Tuskegee experiment from 1932-1972 killed hundreds of Black men when the doctors injected them with syphilis and watched them die over four decades. Also, Black women, Indigenous women, and immigrant women were forcefully sterilized against their will back in the 1970's. This forceful sterilization reared its ugly head again where immigrant women in ICE custody were forced to have hysterectomies last year.
Initially, that I felt that reluctance as well, but then I realized that in those situations, only Black and Latino people were being singled out. Although this type of vaccine is different in its structure to previous vaccines, the FDA would not have approved the COVID-19 vaccine if the result would have killed millions of people.
Second of all, nobody is allowed to go to school when they are children unless they have been vaccinated. If vaccinations were really that bad, then everyone in the country would be dead.
Third, I did wait for statistics to come back as proof before I was vaccinated. The nation of Israel was able to fully reopen back on January 31st of this year their coronavirus cases dropped 60% in the month of January after the COVID-19 was administered. If the vaccine did not work, then Israel would have witnessed another Holocaust.
After seeing the stats proving that the vaccine worked in Israel, then I waited my turn and was vaccinated in April. Now, it is your turn to take the vaccine. We must all play a part so that this country can remain reopened. Cases are down to the hundreds in various states throughout the USA, but it is not down to zero. The threat of contracting the coronavirus is still out there if you choose to remain unvaccinated. Taking the vaccine will take away the concern of running into a random person on the street that is asymptomatic.
If you live in the Bolingbrook area, then head over to Humphrey Middle School to take the vaccine on the 26th. The address is 777 Falcon Ridge Way in Bolingbrook. If you do not live in the area, then head over to WillCountyHealth.org and find a location close to you so that you can be vaccinated before July 4th. If you have any further questions, then you can call the Will County Health Department at (815) 727-8480.