Dear Editor,

The anti-vaccination movement and distrust that the world now demonstrates, as it pertains to public health policies, is the result of the same proponents of these programmes and policies own doing. This resistance and scepticism is an indictment on the very institutions that are responsible for guiding us in this respect.

The three following examples may be considered by observers based on what is unfolding with this pandemic and the vaccines for it.

In 2007 New Zealand’s regulatory authorities charged the United Kingdom’s GlaxoSmithKline, arguably one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical company and one which is currently developing a vaccine against the SARS CoV-2 virus, for ‘misleading’ marketing of its once-owned Ribena juice drink, suggesting that it had “four times the amount of vitamin C in oranges”, when, in fact, it had negligible amounts. If one’s life or basic health depended on that product then one would be dead or left diseased.

In 2011, United States spies disguised as vaccination nurses led to the eventual assassination of the notorious al Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden. In this triumph, the sanctity and efforts of vaccinations’ remarkable help to humanity were brought to a new low, and who is to tell how many ‘lows’ had already been reached and were yet to come. A vaccine coordination official based in the US described the act, which was executed by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as “heinous”.

Dr Anthony Fauci, the US’s leading infectious disease expert, recently advised that the authorities, and those which they guide, need to be as transparent and honest with the public as possible in order to get over the hurdles of misinformation, conspiracy theories, anti-science, and anti-vaccination sentiments. However, those seeking to have rule of power over others often use scare tactics as their “grip”, for the truth confers freedom on he who beholds it. Before the movie The Village we were scaring our children off lonely streets with ‘duppy’ stories like “rolling calf”, and into abstinence with sexual myths. Now we similarly see ads from the Ministry of Health and Wellness playing on the viewers’ or readers’ fear of the complications of COVID-19, and, in a few, they aims seems to be to “bad up” or stigmatise those who differ in their beliefs on mask-wearing, etc, then encourage people not to discriminate?

Just like a sequence of lies, in which one more lie has to cover for the other, such is false hope and scare tactics. The seed has already been planted, and just as night is sure to follow the day we shall reap nothing but what we sow.

Andre O Sheppy

Norwood, St James

astrangely@outlook.com