The anti vaccine challenge

People opposed to vaccines do not like to be called anti-vaxxers. They find it a pejorative term, and rightly so. It is not meant to uplift but a reflection of misinformation and deception.

The Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked untold havoc on our lives.

We now know, with certainty, that life will not return to the way it was before the pandemic. Masks are a necessity. I feel weird not having my mask on whenever I am in public.

At the same time, the economic toll of the pandemic has been equally painful. Businesses have shut. Jobs have been lost. Livelihoods have been damaged. Many folks find themselves in poverty.

The pandemic has also taken a severe toll on our health systems. To date, there have been over 412 million infections globally, with a cumulative death toll of almost 5.84 million.

When the pandemic started in early 2020, I believe none of us thought it would last so long and cause so much death and destruction.

In fact, I remember telling my friends during the first lockdown in Malaysia in mid-March 2020 that things would be back to normal once the chain of infection was broken. It has been close to two years since, and it has not happened. Even today, there are over 21,000 new infections in Malaysia and close to 500,000 new infections globally.

So, is there a panacea to extricate us from this crisis?

I think the answer is No.

But the global consensus is that the only way to defeat the pandemic is to vaccinate ourselves out of it.

However, this has not been roundly agreed to. In fact, vaccine-hesitancy and vaccine-scepticism are on the rise.

In February 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) cautioned that there is a real danger that the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation is hampering the fight against Covid-19.

The director-general of the WHO and secretary-general of the United Nations called it an “infodemic”. The WHO defines an infodemic as: “too much information including false or misleading information in digital and physical environments during a disease outbreak. It causes confusion and risk-taking behaviours that can harm health. It also leads to mistrust in health authorities and undermines the public health response.”

The anti-vaccine rhetoric has also become more sophisticated, with prominent scientists and opinion leaders jumping on the anti-vax bandwagon.

Dr Robert Malone claims he invented mRNA Vaccine technology used by Pfizer and Moderna and then says these vaccines cause more harm than good. Dr Malone has been constructively discredited for his views, yet he has an avowed and passionate following.

Dr Peter McCullough is another prominent anti-vaxer. He even made misleading claims about Malaysia’s Covid-19 vaccination plan. Despite being fact-checked, they continue to spew misleading information about Covid-19 vaccines.

Bolstered by a multi-million-dollar deal with music streaming giant Spotify, Joe Rogan is also another prominent vaccine sceptic. He has used his show to promote vaccine-scepticism.

These voices give credibility to the anti-vaccine movement and even amplify it.

So why is there this anti-vax sentiment, and why is it so embedded?

According to Sanketh Andhavarapu in an article written for the Decision Lab (TDL): “In general, the public already approaches vaccines with uncertainty. The last few years have seen growth in the anti-vaccine (anti-vax) movement, which is strongly associated with conspiracy theories, misinformation, and the desire to protect individual freedoms. The accelerated timeline for development and regulatory approval may lead to an even greater perception of risk among the public towards Covid-19 vaccines. Fueled by suspicion and scepticism, the public may perceive the vaccine to be more experimental than a proven solution.”

Further, vaccine hesitancy is not a new thing. Even in Malaysia, we must grapple with parents who do not want to vaccinate their children, with some quarters calling for paediatric vaccinations to be made compulsory.

The anti-vax movement, precipitated by the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccines, in Malaysia has grown more mainstream with more and more people taking it mainstream, and they have not shied away from sharing their views.

Many Malaysians who have experienced side effects from the vaccines who claim that they have not received a complete response from the health authorities have transformed into vaccine sceptics.

Some are openly sharing their side-effects and claiming that the vaccines are not safe and causing others around them to second guess the efficacy of the vaccine programme to end the Covid-19 pandemic.

Also, with the deluge of information available on the Internet, some of us are transformed into vaccine experts. Vaccine development is a very complex and specialised process, and it is harmful to those of us not involved in the development of vaccines to claim we know enough to claim it is unsafe.

All of this forces us to ask ourselves: do anti-vaxers pose a challenge to ending the global pandemic?

The short answer is yes because of the spread of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. For example, the claim that Reuters only fact-checks anti-vaccine literature because it has links with Pfizer even though the link is tenuous and contrived, militates against vaccines achieving their full potential to end this pandemic.

There is no other way out of the pandemic than vaccines. Even though the genesis of new Covid-19 variants leads to breakthrough infections (BTI), i.e., infecting those who have been fully vaccinated from Covid-19, the symptoms of BTI are milder, and the death rates are lower as well. The data is clear, but anti-vaxers ignore it because it does not fit into their “vaccines are bad” narrative.

Further, governments must be muscular and reactive when dealing with anti-vaxxers because the continued stream of disinformation leads to more and more people who have no negative views about vaccines being taken in by it and ultimately avoiding vaccination. Such actions will prolong the pandemic and complicate the recovery.

While I do not think vaccine mandates are the answer, I believe more must be done to counter this anti-vax narrative because failure to do so will lead to more and more people believing that Covid-19 vaccinations are part of some large conspiracy to control the world.

I have been doing my part, and I hope more of us will do so.

As I said to myself when I took my Covid-19 vaccine in May 2020 when everyone was shying away from the Astra-Zeneca vaccine, it was my "humanity moment", and I believe it is the "humanity moment" of all of us to do our part to ensure Covid-19 does not continue its mean streak and cause more irreparable damage to our lives.

Anti-vaxxers are a challenge for all of us.