I had my Covid vaccine three days ago. It was AstraZeneca-Oxford. After a mild episode of sweating in bed, I feel fine again.
I read about the AstraZeneca vaccine after the jab. It turned out that if this vaccination works, I’d owe my life to the primate species. Chimpanzees to be exact.
The vaccine uses a chimpanzee adenovirus vector, which is modified to generate a strong immune response in the recipient.
On Monkeys
The problem is monkeys want what humans have and humans invade monkeys’ habitat. The overlap is disastrous.
I couldn’t make my mind up about monkeys. By that I mean the macaques in my growing-up environment in Malaysia.
They are certainly clever creatures, but I don’t think they should live close to humans. The problem is monkeys want what humans have and humans invade monkeys’ habitat. The overlap is disastrous.
My aunt used to complain a lot about a family of monkeys that kept ransacking our grandmother’s village home whenever she left for town. According to my aunt, the monkeys were angry because the nearby wood, which was the animals’ home, was cut down for agricultural farming.
Urban monkeys that had acquired taste for human’s food waste find it hard to return to the boring jungle grubs.
The result is two distantly-related species, humans and monkeys, in perpetual cycle of theft and invasion. It’s like watching the karma wheel.
Three days ago, the cycle had closed for me. In order to get off the pandemic bus, which is a disease borne out of the abuse of the wildlife, I had a modified simian virus injected into my vein.
My primate cousins may have saved my life.
The result is two distantly-related species, humans and monkeys, in perpetual cycle of theft and invasion. It’s like watching the karma wheel.
Written after the writer’s first vaccine jab, the hour of the Monkey.
After The Rain 