Attitude of anti-vaxxers becoming more extreme as many harbour distrust of the state
IT’S unclear if anti-vaxxers have more fuel for their argument, as the vaccine fails to provide total protection, particularly of the vastly more infectious Delta variant against which the vaccine has proved less effective, as Pfizer warned it might.
With millions of South Africans remaining unvaccinated, the virus is becoming hard to contain.
The government is struggling to avoid imposing another draconian lockdown as the number of serious cases increase exponentially and rise towards levels which may overwhelm the hospitals.
Other countries have been struggling with the virus and its unpredictable qualities with varying levels of success. Policy to deal with the pandemic involves undesirable choices between balancing the threat to life and health against damage to the economy from social restrictions.
In South Africa many people have from the start ignored this dilemma. To them, all restrictions and the vaccination programme are an assault on freedom in a plot by unnamed persons to seize dictatorial control over their lives.
This attitude is becoming more extreme, where many harbour a distrust of the state as an evolving threat to their interests. Many objections, though, descend into paranoia about state control and anti-vaxxers cherry-pick studies to support conspiracy theories — even claiming, against demonstrable evidence, that the vaccine has proved to be useless because it’s failed to provide total protection.
Now I read vaccine rejectionists are crying that the government is ignoring the discovery of a rare heart problem caused by the vaccine among the young. But researchers have said this problem is minor and vastly outweighed by the risks to the heart posed by the virus. These anti-vaxxers seem incapable of differentiating between authoritative scientists and charlatans, of whom there are many on social media.
Those in our community who are screaming that the restrictions are “fascist” should be viewed with caution. Worse, some of these individuals, aware of our country’s vaccination programme for the young, are now claiming we have “gone Nazi”.
It really has come to something when all who cry “Nazi” have in their lifetimes received life-saving protection by vaccines against smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, and more recently polio so that these diseases are no longer a threat to our health.
RODNEY MAZINTER | Camps Bay