Dear Editor,

I recently heard a caller on a local talk show programme advising people in authority to stop labelling and bullying people who are hesitant about taking the vaccine. He was convinced that this was not the right strategy; instead, he recommended making the vaccines available as they are now and encouraging people to take them.

In his opinion people will, of their own volition, move towards what is good for them. This is obviously not the strategy which Prime Minister Andrew Holness has adopted. Instead, he continues to engage in verbal chastisement by using labels such as anti-vaxxers, false prophets, and pseudo-intellectuals. In using these and other labels, the prime minister is signalling to powerful interests that people reluctant about taking the vaccines are deserving of punitive measures.

In this context I find the well-reasoned, dissenting opinion of the Australian Fair Work Commission Deputy President Lyndall Dean in the Australian Fair Work Commission case of Jennifer Kimber v Sapphire Coast Community Aged Care Ltd to be quite instructive: “Research in the context of COVID-19 has shown that many who are ‘vaccine-hesitant’ are well educated, work in the health-care industry, and have questions about how effective the vaccines are in stopping transmission — whether they are safe to take during pregnancy, or if they affect fertility. A far safer and more democratic approach to addressing vaccine hesitancy, and therefore increasing voluntary vaccination uptake, lies in better education, addressing specific and often legitimate concerns that people may hold, and promoting genuine informed consent. It does not lie in censoring differing opinions or removing rights and civil liberties that are fundamental in a democratic nation. It certainly does not lie in the use of highly coercive, undemocratic, and unethical mandates.

“The statements by politicians that those who are not vaccinated are a threat to public health and should be ‘locked out of society’ and denied the ability to work are not measures to protect public health. They are not about public health and not justified because they do not address the actual risk of COVID. These measures can only be about punishing those who choose not to be vaccinated…”

In an article entitled ‘Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States’ written by authors S V Subramanian and Akhil Kumar and accepted in the European Journal of Epidemiology on September 9, 2021, the authors ended by stating: “In summary, even as efforts should be made to encourage populations to get vaccinated it should be done so with humility and respect. Stigmatising populations can do more harm than good. Importantly, other non-pharmacological prevention efforts (eg the importance of basic public health hygiene with regards to maintaining safe distance or hand washing, promoting better frequent and cheaper forms of testing) needs to be renewed in order to strike the balance of learning to live with COVID-19 in the same manner we continue to live a 100 years later with various seasonal alterations of the 1918 Infuenza virus.”

Prime Minister Andrew Holness, Minister of Health Dr Christopher Tufton, the press, and even some church leaders may do well to take to heart the words: “Stigmatising populations can do more harm than good.”

Shirley Richards

sprichards82@yahoo.com