Thusly put American author Robert Collier: “Constant repetition carries conviction.” 

For Bhutan and the world today, this will not be enough. We need to go beyond spurious beliefs and opinions.

We are living in a very uncertain time. The Covid-19 pandemic is not going to disappear into the thin air anytime soon. We are already talking about the Lambda variant and the next deadly incarnations.

We have made headline around the world as perhaps the only nation in the world that has successfully inoculated all the eligible citizens. But then, we can not bask on this small and transient limelight.

What we have always known is that the vaccines will not protect us fully. New variants of the virus will come the way some nations are fighting about whether to take the vaccines or not—the way the vaccines and vaccination programmes themselves are being easily politicised.

Let them play the game; let’s give it a name.

From Alpha to Omega, Bhutan will fight until the last resource because we have no reason to politicise the disease or the virus but protect our people from unnecessary deaths. 

Implications are huge for a small nation like ours.

That’s why what we are doing and how much we are giving in to the programmes to keep our people safe from this unrelenting scourge is really important.

No one person or a government wing made a mistake. In the scheme of things we are unavoidably in, we have only to move on to secure the lives of our people and the economy of our nation.

Blabbermouths are many who tell us what to do and what not to do but there is Science to guide us. What Bhutan has so far achieved is the envy of the world. We have given the second dose to almost all the eligible people in the country. What is more? We are going further than that by prioritising the young.

The key though has to be that we do not stagger from here, this moment. It is not about looking for the light at the end of the tunnel but securing the tunnel itself. Post-second dose, people have begun to take it easy. This is the real danger facing the nation today.

Mask requirement has to be all the more strong and, likewise, the use and prerequisites to wash hands and to tap one’s movement from place to place. 

Going by the proliferation of the virus and its destructive intensity, we need to be more careful and vigilant.

Science tells us that the basic precautions are by far more effective than the many vaccines coming from the different laboratories around the world. 

Nothing has changed significantly in our battle against the Covid-19; it is still largely upon us to manage the risks.

Collier also said: “People blame their environment. There is only one person to blame—and only one—themselves.”

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