From hesitation to rejection-2

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

Last Saturday I started this discussion on the rising incidence of people rejecting vaccination. This refusal prompted people in power to coerce their subordinates or those who depend on them or who are fearful of losing their jobs or position. This is criminal. I will discuss later why, particularly the movement now in process to charge these coercive people not only criminally but for “crime against humanity” under the international law of the Nuremberg Code.

To continue from Saturday especially for people who think the vaccine is safe and protects them and who believe opposition is fake news.

The BBC reported that “the Seychelles has vaccinated more people per head against Covid-19 than any other country, but has experienced a spike in cases. More than 60% of the population has now been fully vaccinated in the chain of islands off the east coast of Africa. The Seychelles Ministry of Health said on 10 May that about a third of the (new) cases had been among those who are fully vaccinated.”

On the other hand, LifeSiteNews said on May 20 that “Dr. Mark Hobart, 62, wrote in a May 4 letter to the state’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO) urging that those who had been tested positive should not be vaccinated.

The doctor alerted the CMO to** literature demonstrating that vaccination is not necessary, as alternative therapies like Ivermectin have been shown to be effective. The dangers of the vaccines for people with COVID-19 antibodies is, Hobart wrote, “especially concerning given that literature now confirms the efficacy of alternative therapies to the covid vaccine offering protection from SARS-CoV-2 and its associated Covid illness.”

He cited the article “Review of Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin” in the American Journal of Therapeutics (e299-e318 [2021]) as the latest research into the topic.

This finding is among the reasons that people reject vaccination. They don’t need it because there is a prevention and treatment which is much better, cheaper and safer.

I believe that the effectiveness of Ivermectin is among the reasons that the advocates and those in positions of authority who are compromised with big pharmaceuticals are blocking the mass use of Ivermectin. We shall see later the experience of Mexico and Peru.

The editorial of the Philippine Daily Inquirer of May 24 has a succinct opinion on vaccine hesitancy and rejection.

“If anyone needed any proof that Filipinos’ vaccine hesitancy is based not just on superstition or gossip, the clear preference for Pfizer (and perhaps other vaccine brands from the West) shows that some of it is at least based on considered opinion. On top of widespread distrust of Chinese vaccines, which were the first to become available in the country, Filipinos as a whole have been hesitant to get the COVID-19 shots.

“The most recent Pulse Asia survey shows that 61 percent of respondents would refuse to get vaccinated, an increase from 47 percent last January. Only 16 percent of respondents said they would go for a vaccine shot, while 23 percent said they “cannot say” if they would get the shot if it were made available.”

I recall a much earlier survey this year which showed only 20% will agree to vaccination. I think this was the reason that the initial target of the government is 70% to get what officials say is “herd immunity”. That means vaccinating over 50 million Filipinos. Are we any closer to that number?

“Why the reluctance?” PDI asked.

But government is not listening, a proof of public rejection and now resistance.

“Some 84 percent said it was concerns about safety that would keep them from receiving the jab, while 7 percent cited vaccine efficacy and 6 percent said they just didn’t think a vaccine was necessary.

“It wasn’t always this way,” PDI said, citing a study conducted by a team from the Ateneo School of Government and the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health that found that as recently as 2015, 93 percent of Filipinos strongly agreed that vaccines were important. But by 2018, at the height of the controversy over the anti-dengue Dengvaxia vaccine, public confidence in vaccines plummeted to 32 percent. Compliance with childhood vaccinations dropped precipitously as well.”

Continued tomorrow.