VACCINE RESISTANCE

Aug 09, 2021 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – Vaccine hesitancy is now being replaced by vaccine resistance. There is a now movement brewing which is demanding respect for an unknown right of not having to take the vaccine.
No such right exists. Those who are formulating petitions demanding respect for their so-called right not to be vaccinated should be reminded that all human rights are circumscribed by respect for the rights of others. In other words, individual rights cannot conflict with the rights of others and, in this instance, the right of others to be protected from infectious diseases is a protected right under most democratic Constitutions, including Guyana’s.
The Government of Guyana has not made it mandatory for persons to be vaccinated. They are simply saying that if you are not vaccinated, you cannot have unbridled access to government facilities.
Nor is anyone being denied government services. All that is being required is that if you are not vaccinated, special arrangements be put in place for you to receive the service – arrangements which involve measures being taken to guarantee the safety of staff and others.
How different is this from being asked to wear a mask. At present, you cannot go into any public building, business or public transportation without being masked. But when these regulations were published, no one spoke about being denied access to services. So what is different from extending this regulation to require that persons be vaccinated before automatic entry?
No one is being forced to take any vaccine but if you are not vaccinated, you cannot be allowed to pose a threat to those who are. It is as simple as that.
When countries passed laws saying that before you enter their territory, you have to have a negative PCR testing, there was no big hue and cry. No one jumped up and said that they do not have the right to be tested. When the rule was changed to indicate that for some countries, including Guyana, persons must be vaccinated, no one protested. But a big hue and cry is being made about the requirement of being vaccinated before you can receive government services.
No one is being dismissed from their places of employment for not being vaccinated. But if you are not, then you must be tested regularly to ensure that you are not infectious.
No place of employment is going to allow any staff member infected with the small pox virus to be on the job while symptomatic. They do this to protect others from being infected.
The Delta variant of the coronavirus is considered more infectious than small pox. So why should persons be allowed to work unless there are immunised or unless they can show that they do not have the virus?
Vaccine hesitancy is high in Guyana. It is high also in other countries. The Government of Guyana made extraordinary efforts to obtain vaccines at a time when vaccines were not easily accessible even for developed countries such as Canada.
The government did what was recommended by the World Health Organisation. They began with inoculating front-line healthcare workers. Then they targeted persons over 65 years. The uptake was not impressive. They then extended it to persons over 50 years. Again, the uptake was not impressive. Vaccine hesitancy was high and it still remains high, including among the elderly despite the largest vaccinated demographic being persons over 65 years. That is why so many of elderly are dying. Some of them are saying that they don’t go anywhere so why get vaccinated. The answer is that while they may not be going anywhere, others are in their way and they are contracting the virus through contact with these individuals, and many are dying because they lack the protection afforded by vaccines.
In Guyana, vaccination had to be quickly opened to all ages because the elderly and later those 40 plus persons were not coming forward in large numbers to receive the vaccines. There was no blunder on the part of the authorities; people were not coming forward as expected.
At present, around 54 percent of the adult population have received a first dose and just under 30 a second dose. But the trend around the world suggests that once more than 50 percent of the total population is inoculated, the rate of vaccine uptake decreases dramatically.
In America, from a high of 3.3 million doses per day, less than 700,000 doses are being administered daily for weeks now. And more than 100 million Americans are not coming forward to be vaccinated.
No amount of public education will change anything. If by now people do not see the urgency of being vaccinated, no amount of public education will force them. As such, the next best strategy is to protect the vaccinated from the unvaccinated, which is no different from protecting those without small pox from those with small pox.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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