Vaccination Slots Locked In

Well, I mumbled about how my age demographic has been pushed back for vaccination. Funnily, news have been released that my age demographic can finally register for vaccination.

And so I have registered for it.

The main criterion that I used was ``which vaccination centre is the closest'' as opposed to picking which of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, or Sinovac that I want to go for. With that in mind, it took two tries to actually register for a vaccination slot---the availability of the slots moved really quickly.

Thanks to being on sabbatical, I was basically open for any date, and on my second try, I just threw caution to the wind and just speed-round the vaccination. It led to my first dose occurring some time the week after, and my last dose before mid-August.

Not exactly as early as I want, but it is early enough.

Referring back to the news release though, I raised my eyebrow a little when I saw this quote attributed to the minister (emphasis mine):

SINGAPORE: Singapore citizens aged 12 to 39 can register online for their COVID-19 vaccinations from Friday (Jun 11), the Ministry of Health (MOH) announced on Thursday.

"This is a big group of 1.5 million people who have yet to be vaccinated," Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said at a COVID-19 multi-ministry task force press conference on Thursday.

I mean, no shit minister---incidentally, this is also the group of people who are actively part of SIN city's present and future. That's roughly 1.5M/5.7M~26% of the population of SIN city. The economy is liable to tank if this particular age demographic gets wiped out for whatever reason, a definite existential problem as compared to say having the 40+ demographic getting hypothetically wiped out.

And that's all I will say about it. =)

I'm just glad that the opportunity to get vaccinated has finally arrived. Speaking of vaccination, an interesting question was raised about the difference among ``vaccination'', ``inoculation'', and ``immunisation''.

vaccination

Innoculation with a vaccine in order to protect against a particular disease.

inoculation

The act or an instance of inoculating (to introduce a serum, vaccine, or antigenic substance into the body of a person/animal, especially to produce or boost immunity to a specific disease), especially the introduction of an antigenic substance or vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.

immunisation

The act of making immune (especially by inoculation).

So I suppose ``vaccination'' is a more specific version of the act of inoculating, ``inoculation'' itself being an action of introducing substances that can improve immunity, and ``immunisation'' is a more general term about activities that improve immunity in general.

What a mess. English is really non-trivial; no wonder non-native speakers go nuts and create very strange versions of it that seems to ``make more sense''.

It's a short entry today---still kinda reeling from the graduation announcement of Kiryu Coco, mostly due to trying to make sense from the various talk streams that she put up after the main announcement stream talking about the situation and [very tangentially] hinting about what is to come after she leaves Hololive Production.

It's still hot as hell out here, though I have found that there is a stall that sells traditional ice-shaved desserts that is just out in Hougang Village---I've never remembered any of the coffeeshops having that particular type of food over the past 30+ years of staying here. A godsend in many ways in dealing with the heat, from both the physical aspect (shaved ice is wonderful) and the traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) aspect (get some ``cooling'' 清汤).

Till the next update.