We must stare the facts in the face on the Covid-19 vaccination issue

14Sep 2021
Editor
Editorial
The Guardian
We must stare the facts in the face on the Covid-19 vaccination issue

SENIOR officials in the central government and regional administration are gearing up for a week-long vaccination drive where national and local leaders will seek to sensitise people to go to vaccination centres and protect themselves against severe effects of Covid-19 infection.

Well and good – only that, a common problem with such drives is that they battle not against lack of information but lack of faith, or oblivion to danger, which takes time to change.

Campaigns usually come in two types, and it is important to figure out where this type of campaign lies, that is, whether it is geared at helping an individual in his or her own interest, and whether it is geared at helping the public authorities do this or that.

This campaign is chiefly directed at helping individuals take care of their own health. But some are not convinced, so they show affinity to believable and unforeseen dangers being told left and right.

To show that there is a battle of faith and often takes the form of organisational disputes, some people – including those in positions of leadership –  find it hard to alter their stands or perceptions.

Global radicalism fuels skepticism, where the main culprit is always the ‘one per cent’ richest part of the world. The critics, dominating portions of the internet, say the ‘pandemic’ and then the vaccines are parts of an operation with a sinister motive.

When President Samia Suluhu Hassan reminds the nation that we have taken jabs all our lives – polio at the start, yellow fever when one travels, and now there is an anti-malaria vaccine being tested – she is talking to those who haven’t been won to conspiracy theories.

However, when there is a wave of deaths across a section of the population, many adherents or admirers of conspiracy theories change boots and rush to vaccinate. Among them are seniors as well as those above 30 years and below 50 years, though many with some hesitation.

In that case the government would be right to repeat and explain its message on the ease of catching the dangerously impairing and often fatal flu, and ensure that there are enough doses of the Covid-19 vaccine available if not always at each vaccination centre then at least in regional head offices, for ease of supply when the stock runs low.

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