Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

If you think we are done with COVID-19, you’re dead wrong.

The more we ignore the statistics and loosen up on precautions without a sufficient number of people being vaccinated and having developed immunity to the virus, the more likely we are for COVID and its many variants to surge and wreak havoc on our lives once again.

During a news conference on Thursday, officials at the Mississippi State Department of Health called it complacency. Maybe that’s exactly what it is, but we better be careful.

We have been able to reopen and resume our lives because so many among us were vaccinated in March and April. Then, after the initial rush, vaccinations have tapered off. And they have tapered off too soon.

Many who received their first vaccination in Mississippi never showed up for the second shot, an important key to developing immunity to the virus. It leaves themselves and others who are unvaccinated around them, including children, vulnerable to a life-threatening illness.

State health department officials hope now that the coronavirus vaccine has been approved for children ages 12 through 15 that vaccinations will pick up.

Dr. Thomas Dobbs, state health officer, said he hopes the effort to vaccinate children will “shake us out of our complacency.

“I want us all to really sit back and realize that you’re likely either to get the COVID vaccine or the COVID virus,” Dobbs said. “And under every circumstance, under every conceivable scenario, you are a thousand-fold, if not a million-fold better off getting the vaccine than contracting COVID.”

A key to defeating the deadly threat of COVID is to get our children vaccinated. Doing so will go a long way toward a return to normalcy for our children, who since March 2020 have had their lives completely disrupted. School, social and extracurricular activities are so important to a child’s overall growth and development.

We have complete control as to whether we defeat the deadly virus and return ourselves to our pre-COVID lives. It’s actually very easy.

Just get that free vaccination. The life you save may be one you love dearly.