WHY DON’T SOME PEOPLE TRUST THE COVID VACCINE?

Vaccines have their success stories and horrible tragedies. Some of the most deadly diseases have been eradicated by vaccines or contained significantly like smallpox, polio, hepatitis A and B, yellow fever, rabies, tetanus etc.

But there are some painful memories and horrible experiences also. How one can forget the “ Cutter laboratory fiasco” and the resultant tragedy of the USA where thousands of children got polio because of a vaccine which left many paralysed and some dead?

The Dengvaxia controversy of Philippines children getting more at risk because of vaccination in previously non-infected children against dengue is also fresh in the memory of many people. All these episodes may make many people sceptical about vaccines, especially RNA vaccines.

The recent incident of strong protest by truckers in Canada and also related to tennis player Novak Djokovic point to “ vaccine hesitancy” regarding COVID 19 vaccine. As nobody wants to die of infectious disease, then why people are refusing this vaccine?

Pro vaccine people try to brush aside such protests as political agenda but are it really so? As such, no ordinary citizen would like to put his life at risk to prove a political point. A deeper analysis is required to understand this vaccine hesitancy.

If anybody analyses the whole scenario of just declined COVID 19 pandemic, it appears that the whole pandemic management was poorly planned globally.

The treatment regimens were frequently changed to the extent that even after two years, nobody can be confident about the exact line of treatment in future. Drugs like remdesivir which were black marketed are now already in oblivion along with much-abused doxycycline, Azithromycin, HCQS and ivermectin in many latest treatment advisories. Similar things have also happened with the vaccine. From the very beginning, everything was put on the public domain on an ad-hoc basis.

The dose schedule, when it should be given after an episode of disease, its pricing, effectiveness, side effects etc all kept changing at a rapid pace in tandem with a number of people dying at that point in time.

This inconsistency gave enough material to sceptical people to denounce the vaccination effort as a farce and profit-making venture of big pharma.

Even the pro-vaccine people lost some of their trust in the effectiveness of the vaccine. It is common knowledge that in most countries, senior doctors stayed indoors and isolated. They never examined patients closely and treated them only by guesswork.

As a result, their opinion regarding the usefulness of the vaccine was taken with a pinch of salt. With the advent of Google and other social media, personal experiences were shared across the world and when, during the second wave, immunized people started reporting severe COVID 19 symptoms, the trust in the vaccine was far low to recommend it to everyone.

It was also surprised to note that no portal was created where registered medical professionals can report about side effects, success and failure of vaccine case by case. This approach by manufacturers dented the authenticity of their published data.

Then came the question of the easy and systematic availability of vaccines during the launch period and its dosage schedule.

People who were interested to get vaccinated for its perceived benefit were not getting the job easily and there was very poor communication between them and authorities.

The time gap between the first and second dose and finally the booster was not well-defined and even most of the doctors were not sure of the exact timing.

The time gap went on changing as per the availability of the vaccine. A logical question arises under such circumstances - is science so much flexible?

At this point in time, the COVID 19 virus has lost its virulence significantly which means it can no more kill people as it did during the first and mainly second wave.

Now a question arises that should the governments of the world force people to go for vaccination even when the pandemic has gone into abatement and become endemic?

Hasn’t the time arrived when these things should be left to medical professionals and people as in cases of many other diseases?

Political involvement always leads to division in society and should be minimal in day to day decisions of the people. Politicians have nothing concrete to offer and hence, are always in search to get credit for trivia and important.