Covid-19 Vaccination: A cry for fairness

August 16, 2021

Hosia Mviringi

Covid-19 has brought to the world a very complicated and unique situation that exposes the very vulnerability of the human race whose longevity is under threat.

When Covid-19 was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organisation, it opened floodgates for manipulation and abuse of human rights by politicians worldwide.

Governments were awarded a blank check to use state of emergency legislation to enforce any Covid-19 related regulations.

In some instances the result has been a blatant abuse of such powers by other autocratic governments in the world.

In most cases it is politicians who are now empowered to act like medical doctors and scientists.

But perhaps what we need to discuss openly as societies is the need to balance rationality, best medical ethics and practices, and rights of citizens.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) declared that for a population to be considered as safe from the novel coronavirus, at least 60 per cent of eligible citizens must be vaccinated. For now we may not want to delve into how the figure was arrived at, but how the figure affects liberties and freedom of choice for nationals.

Governments worldwide are convinced that for life to return to normal, all citizens have to be fully vaccinated.

But, with advice from the World Health Organisation and vaccine manufacturing companies, a third vaccine dose is being touted, presumably to bolster the efficacy of current doses which are deemed to be still under clinical trials against the ever mutating virus, meaning that it may never be known when full vaccination can be achieved.

When the vaccination program started worldwide, the general message was that citizens retain the right to choose to vaccinate or not in keeping with dictates of the universal bill of rights.

With people still seeking for sufficient information on vaccines, including new vaccine technologies such as mRNA, it would be expected that the long held medical ethics of informed consent continue to be upheld and enforced.

At first, when the vaccination program commenced in the whole world, the norm was that potential recipients would be asked if they might have underlying chronic conditions which could make it unsafe to receive the Covid-19 jab.

Such conditions as chronic sugar diabetes, high Blood Pressure, and those on medication that could interfere with the vaccine, were exempt from receiving it.

But as the program proceeded and governments increased their vaccine acquisition, the trajectory is increasingly pointing to mandatory vaccination. Whether or not one is ready to receive it, or if one has underlying conditions, it's increasing turning out to be a difficult choice between the jab and livelihood or life itself.

Conditions are becoming tighter by the day for unvaccinated individuals regardless of the reasons.

At soccer matches, one can not get access to watch a game unless they are vaccinated while soccer players have to choose between being vaccinated or losing their chance to play and earn a living.

It's becoming normal by the day for companies to engage in daylight discrimination and stigmatisation on the basis of one's vaccination status. It's becoming fashionable for companies to bar unvaccinated employees from their work spaces.

One is having to make the difficult choice to either get vaccinated or lose their job and livelihood.

The freedom of choice is diminishing and waxing away everyday due to the difficult choices being put on the table.

What we see as a result is an increasing number of fatalities in the vaccinated category, mainly because many are now being forced to receive the jab by circumstances regardless of their medical history or underlying conditions.

Many are forced to conceal information on any present medical regime which may not be compatible with the jab, all for the right to be acceptable.

The majority of victims are the old ages who are mainly susceptible to opportunistic infections due to their compromised immunity and a myriad of underlying conditions.

The difficult choices presented now mean that most chronically ill patients are having to conceal their conditions for fear of losing the opportunity to be vaccinated because this could take away a chance to earn a living at work.

They know that missing a chance to get vaccinated will cost them friendships through discrimination.

Covid-19 vaccination has created an unprecedented gulf which is mainly driven by fear instead of scientific evidence.

We have seen medical and clinical experts shun the word "stigma". But if all truth is to be told, Covid-19 vaccination has created a stigmatic syndrome bigger and wider than what HIV AIDS created in the early 80s.

So far it has to be agreed that all Covid-19 vaccines on the market have been approved for emergency use. That means that they are all still under development, meaning that their use, efficacy and safety are not backed by absolute scientific evidence, thus their use and uptake can not be compulsory.

Conditions that the world has created so far make vaccination compulsory even though no legislative frameworks have been put in place to enforce it.

In France for example, President Manuel Macron declared that unvaccinated citizens would not get access to public facilities, including access to malls and grocery stores, this ostensibly for the safety and convenience of only those that are vaccinated.

This is unprecedented.

But there is no scientific evidence to suggest that it is indeed the fascinated that are at a higher risk of infection and death than the unvaccinated.

If indeed the vaccinated are at a higher risk, then what could be the justification to force people to be inoculated?

The general assumption is that vaccination is there to train the disease fighting mechanism of a recipient so that they are safe from subsequent vector attacks. That should make them safer from the pathogen than the unvaccinated.

These are some of the myths and misconceptions that need debunking.

Yet national legislations must be able to protect citizens from discrimination and stigmatisation in the event that they choose to delay vaccination.

The prolonged state of emergency under the worldwide lockdowns and restrictions could mean that such civil liberties will be overruled for a much longer period. It's like a war situation where many civil liberties are suspended indefinitely until the war is over.

But could we say that the world is at war? The answer is a yes and a no.

The vaccine industry is a war zone, where producing countries are engaging in cutthroat competition for the vaccine market. Some if not most them would want to see the epidemic continue for a much longer period in order for them to make maximum return on investment in vaccine technology and stocks.

This could be the third world war in another form.

Recently, Pfizer announced an upward projection of profits for Financial Year 2021 from between US$70.1 billion-US$72.5 billion, to between US$78 billion-US$80 billion due to increased uptake of its vaccines and also a possibility for a third dose to augment the first two whose efficacy has been put under stern test by the Delta variant.

Adjusted earnings per share rose to US$4.05 to US$3.95 while total revenues for second quarter are projected to top 92 per cent from 45 per cent increase in the first quarter 2021.

I guess Covid-19 prevalence and continued virus mutations make good business sense to big pharmaceuticals who are milking billions out of the human predicament.