By Alex Rosaria
Until everybody is safe, nobody is safe is a United Nations’ slogan which makes the case for vaccinating everyone around the world. Failure to vaccinate prolongs the pandemic — with all the massive social, health and economic costs that entails — and allows new possibly vaccine-resistant variants to flourish, putting everybody back in danger.
We have seen new COVID-19 cases here in Curaçao drop dramatically, but we cannot lean back. We need to stay vigilant. Many countries struggle because they have not been able to get their hands on the COVID-19 vaccines. We, on the other hand, are among the fortunate ones to have vaccines for everyone. Why should we care about what goes on elsewhere? COVID-19 has taught us — at a terrible human cost — that we all live on an interconnected planet and our fate is in each other’s hands.
We cannot lean back either whilst false information is leading to people hesitating to take the vaccine. It should not come as a surprise that those hardest hit by the pandemic are often those most likely to be sceptical of vaccination. Here we must double our efforts to try to dispel some of the vaccine myths which are a real threat to public health, in other words the health of everybody.
A study by University of Illinois this year found that 63 per cent of vaccine-sceptic people changed their minds after reading/watching news reports about people who had already been successfully vaccinated. The study also found that people are more likely to be hesitant when politicians talk about the need to vaccinate or contact them directly with information on how to get vaccinated.
Now is probably the time to stop pointing fingers at the antivaccine movement and change our communication strategy.
Alex David Rosaria (53) is a freelance consultant active in Asia & Pacific. He is a former Member of Parliament, Minister of Economic Affairs, State Secretary of Finance and UN Implementation Officer in Africa and Central America. He is from Curaçao and has an MBA from the University of Iowa. (USA)
