It is human nature to bury memories of pain, horror and despair. We are simply not yet ready to process all that happened just three to five years ago; far easier to forget it than to try to learn the lessons of a pandemic that killed millions of people.

It is far easier to pretend with a shudder that COVID-19 is past than to focus on the speed with which it spread, the speed with which it mutated, the impact on hospitals, long-term effects on people who contracted it and the despair caused by the lockdowns.

Malta lost over 900 people due to COVID-19. We had around 123,000 cases, which means nearly one of every four people on the island contracted the disease. And that dreadful figure does not capture the loneliness and solitude of families separated from each other, the anxiety for business owners, the cancer treatments foregone because of restrictions.

Will we ever know the real cost? And how would we measure it anyway?

Malta had an admirable vaccination rate of over 90%. Various factors helped this figure, not the least of which was the speed with which the island obtained vaccines, the efficient way in which they were made available and our unshakeable trust in Charmaine Gauci, whose daily updates were credible and factual, informed and informative.

But there was a huge chasm between Malta and other countries where vaccines were not available, not administered or promoted. The great shame is that this is only part of the global story: many people had access to the vaccines but preferred not to take them because of fear, fed by conspiracy theories that ignored the impassioned pleas of the authorities and scientific data so readily available.

The World Health Organisation reports that, in 2021 alone, COVID-19 vaccines saved an estimated 14.4 million lives worldwide. And, yet, one peer-reviewed medical study showed that, in the US, unvaccinated patients were 2.46 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than those who were vaccinated.

According to Worldometer, the website which collated data during the pandemic, there were only 45,700 cases around the world in the past week – most countries no longer even report their statistics.

But, perhaps, that is why Health Minister Jo Etienne Abela raised the alarm last week.

The number of COVID-19 cases are not just a statistic but a stark reminder that disease is still out there. Fear of COVID-19 has abated and the take-up of the free vaccine has plummeted.

So far, 33,417 people have taken the influenza vaccine while 12,247 have taken the pneumonia vaccine. But just 6,610 people took the COVID-19 one – even though the influenza and COVID-19 vaccines are available free of charge for all those aged over six months while senior citizens aged 65 and over are also eligible for vaccination against pneumococcal infections.

The health minister blamed this on “bad press in social media” and the spread of conspiracy theories. He urged people – especially the vulnerable and the elderly – “to take not one or two of these vaccines but all three of them”.

We believed in the vaccine five years ago. And we did so because we based it on science. The pandemic was tough on everybody and nobody wants to go back to restrictions. But when people decide not to vaccinate because of baseless claims, they create a ripple effect that can lead to outbreaks of preventable diseases. The anti-vaccine movement is not a harmless fringe; it’s actively eroding the progress we’ve made in controlling illnesses that once claimed thousands of lives.

Why are we hesitating now? We need to keep in mind the quote: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’