By Indradyumna Swami, ISKCON Guru and GBC.
In light of the ongoing coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the development of COVID-19 vaccines, many of my students have inquired whether they should get vaccinated or not.
As a result, I wish to share my views on this matter with my students and those who look to me for advice.
Of course, the final decision whether or not to get vaccinated rests with each individual.
After consulting several devotee doctors who have literally saved my life on five separate occasions (three instances of deadly forms of cancer and two instances of septicemia), I decided to get vaccinated and did so March 2, 2021.
These devotee doctors are highly educated, caring and experienced medical professionals.
As I am a layman in medical matters, I prefer to put my faith in such devotee doctors rather than in the unfounded anti-vaccination theories that abound.
I am no stranger to vaccines, or to put it bluntly: I am alive today because I got vaccinated.
As a young boy, I was vaccinated with a precursor to the current vaccination for meningitis.
When meningitis raged through my neighborhood and school, I contracted a less severe case of the disease because I had been vaccinated.
As a result, I survived. Three boys in my school who did not get vaccinated were not as fortunate. They died.
When poliomyelitis (polio), a crippling and potentially deadly infectious disease, broke out in the 1950s, my parents had me vaccinated for that too.
Steven Rushmore, a friend who lived down the street, didn’t get vaccinated. His parents were skeptical of the vaccine.
Steven subsequently contracted polio and was left permanently paralyzed.
In 1995, I was on my way to preach in Mozambique while that country was in the grip of yellow fever. I was advised to get vaccinated, but the vaccination sounded scary.
Being uncertain, I consulted my godbrother, Pusta Krishna Prabhu (Paul Dossick, MD, FACS), who had been Srila Prabhupada’s personal secretary.
I asked Pusta Krishna if Srila Prabhupada had ever gotten vaccinated against yellow fever in order to preach in Africa.
Pusta Krishna confirmed that Prabhupada had. So I did too. Pusta Krishna also mentioned that Prabhupada had gotten vaccinated against the flu on several occasions.
For me, getting vaccinated against COVID-19 was a matter of common sense. Yes, there may be mild reactions to the vaccine and even severe reactions in rare cases, but these are the exceptions to the rule.
What is much more dangerous is that COVID-19 has taken the lives of more than 2.5 million people in the past year.
And there are more than 110 million people who have become infected with COVID-19.
Who can imagine how high the final death toll may be? Just in the United States alone in 12 months, COVID-19 has killed 525,000 people!
That is more American deaths than were killed in World War I, World War 2, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf wars combined over the same period of time!
I agree with the doctors and scientists that if a significant percentage of us get vaccinated, we will be able to get back to living a “normal life.”
And when normal life resumes, Lord Caitanya’s saṅkīrtana movement can get back into full swing, curing people of the real disease, forgetfulness of Krishna. END.
Srila Prabhupada pastime -
In early February 1973 in Sydney Australia, Srila Prabhupada developed an infection on his finger from a paper cut while opening mail.
The infected finger got worse over a few days and eventually Prabhupada asked for a doctor who could give him penicillin.
We did this and a doctor came and gave him penicillin that healed his infected finger in a day.
However, one young immature devotee was confused. He saw that Prabhupada was always constantly chanting Hare Krishna, translating Srimad Bhagavatam's 3rd Canto and preaching to the devotees. This devotee could not understand why Krishna did not personally protect His pure devotee.
So this young boy asked Prabhupada,
''You are always chanting Krishna's name, working late at night translating Sastra into English and preaching to the devotees, why didn't Krishna personally heal your finger that caused you so much discomfort?''
Srila Prabhupada smiled and answered the boy showing great faith in Lord Krishna,
''Oh yes Krishna was so kind He immediately helped me, it was Krishna who sent the penicillin that healed my finger''.
The lesson here is, it's not that Krishna has to personally appear and wave some magic wand and heal his pure devotee, no, it does not work that way, the fact is Krishna wants us to do everything we can to help ourselves, then He will give us what we lack as Bhagavad Gita tells us.
''God helps those who helps themselves''
This is the secret of spiritual life.
Why I Decided to Get Vaccinated Against COVID-19
By Nrsimhananda Prabhu ACBSP
At the age of 73 years, I am in the so-called “high risk category” for COVID-19 so I decided to get vaccinated.
My vaccination story, however, begins in the 1950s when I was a child and another virus was overtaking America and the world.
As a small boy, I saw scary magazine photos of young children lying inside riveted, cylindrical devices called “iron lungs” (now relics of the past).
Polio, an infectious viral disease affecting the central nervous system, was crippling kids like me or paralyzing their diaphragms so that many couldn’t breath without this “iron lung.”
At the height of the polio outbreak of my childhood, the disease was infecting nearly 60,000 children annually.
Spread virally like COVID-19 today, polio proved fatal for two out of three victims afflicted with paralysis.
Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Albert Sabin were virologists who developed separate vaccines to combat the dreaded polio virus, One vaccine was made from killed virus and the other from live virus.
Though millions of parents rushed to get their young children vaccinated, teenagers weren’t interested.
In those days a rock’n’roll singer named Elvis Presley made a guest appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, the most popular TV show of the time.
Unknown to his TV audience of millions, Elvis wasn’t there just to perform. Before singing “Hound Dog,” Elvis rolled up his sleeve and got vaccinated.
Despite the literally crippling effects of the virus and the promising results of vaccination, many Americans simply weren’t getting vaccinated. In fact, before Elvis famously appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, immunization levels among U.S. teens were at an abysmal 0.6 percent.
After Elvis got his jab on the The Ed Sullivan Show, vaccination rates among U.S. youth soared to 80 percent after just six months.
As a veteran of many surgeries from bunions to open heart, I have experienced the benefits of medical science, whether allopathic, Ayurvedic, Chinese or herbalogic.
Many devotees are still with us due to Krishna’s mercy and the sophistication of medical science. Prabhupada told us to use “whatever works.”
Nearly all public health authorities, epidemiologists and virologists recommend getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
Our ISKCON devotee doctors advocate getting vaccinated as well. Why should I dismiss the judgment of hundreds of devotee doctors who are members of the Bhakti Vedanta Medical Association?
Or the learned conclusions of the Chief Physician of the Bhaktivedanta Hospital & Research Institute in Mumbai?
Or the decisions of a majority of GBC members who have gotten vaccinated or are planning to get vaccinated despite the absence of any official GBC policy recommending vaccination against COVID-19?
I have been the beneficiary of the good intentions and talents of medical professionals.
There is always a chance of an adverse reaction, but the risk is statistically insignificant.
Srila Prabhupada got vaccinated. His actions speak louder than any words.
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