Market Times

To Vax Or Not To Vax ... Part 2

By Anne Matthews

My article in the last edition of The Bribie Islander certainly generated some very interesting discussions. Several people expressed the opinion that anti-vaxxers shouldn’t go to the hospital if they develop COVID or if they are treated in hospital they should have to pay for their treatment. Some argued we all have a right to do as we please – without regard to others. While others argued we all must have the vax – for the good of all. What should a compassionate society do? Doctors take the Hippocratic Oath and are required to treat the sick to the best of their ability. So they cannot turn a patient away or ask them to pay because they chose not to have a vaccination. Just as they can’t send a smoker away for having cancer, or an obese person for contracting a disease due to their weight. Readers may also have noticed that when posting an article like mine on Facebook, Facebook now put a message at the bottom of the post stating: “COVID-19 vaccinations go through many tests for effectiveness and safety and are then monitored closely. Source: World Health Organisation”. This message is then linked to a Government site that gives upto-date factual information. The spread of misinformation about COVID, and vaccinations, is fermenting so much unrest, fear and uncertainty in our communities. It has resulted in vaccination itself becoming a very polarising issue. So many people are believing and repeat the false information they read on social media – promoted by people who have no qualifications in any medical field. I wonder if people are aware that many social media comments are generated by internet ‘bots. Bots (short for robots) are software applications that run automated simple repetitive tasks and can do this much faster than humans. One person can therefore produce thousands of ‘posts’ that appear genuine but all originate from one source. The gullible read them and believe that ‘so many people can’t be wrong’. After all – it’s there on their computer.

A recent example of ‘bot comments was from Dr StokesParish, a Gold Coast nurse and medical educator, who posted a photo of her six-year-old daughter on Twitter after she had her COVID vaccination. The tweet attracted hundreds of comments calling her an irresponsible mother, suggesting that her daughter should be taken into child custody and that she was ‘treating her daughter like cattle’. Dr Stokes-Parish had to spend a day deleting the comments and found that many of these bullying/trolling responses were from ‘bots. Dr Stokes-Parish reported the trolling to Twitter who responded by saying the comments did not ‘violate any terms and conditions’. Her response to this was ‘For me, that just highlights that, once again, the technology companies aren't really doing enough to prevent bullying and to prevent the sharing of false information’. Another person put up a parody account advising that her dog had caught the virus and had to be put down. The furore (i.e. threats and nasty comments) caused by this ‘parody’ was staggering. People believed it to be true because it was on social media. A further example of misinformation is a 12 January 2022 Facebook post that has been shared and liked by several hundred people. The post ‘claims’ that a five-year-old Sydney child died one hour after receiving a COVID-19 vaccination. This post is being widely spread with a message urging people to share the information. I can find no evidence of a child dying an hour after vaccination but did find that in NSW a child under five died with COVID-19 – becoming the youngest person within the state to die with the virus. NSW Chief Officer Kerry Chant said the child, from southwestern Sydney, had significant underlying health conditions and died at home. If this type of trolling and spreading of misinformation continues it will create more uncertainty and people may hesitate before having a booster. This hesitation is already occurring despite the fact that statistics from Health authorities in Australia and overseas are showing that vaccines are working. For example on 17 January 2022, Queensland Chief Health Officer, Dr John Gerrard, said that unvaccinated people were 24 times more likely to end up in the ICU than people who are triple vaccinated. And preliminary data from Israel's Sheba Medical Center indicate a significant antibody boost in those given the fourth shot. Another sad fact that is emerging from the pandemic is that COVID-19 is becoming a disease of the poor and uneducated. In Sydney, the pandemic has disproportionately affected those living in the west and south-west, which is home to the lower-income and most culturally-diverse communities. Similarly in Melbourne, nine highdensity public housing towers with a large population of migrants were placed in hard lockdown. And, it is these people who perform so many of our essential services and are unable to work from home.

Even the QR code registration has caused a division in our communities because many do not have access to an up-to-date phone to scan in to enter a venue or shop. But all shops do offer a manual system – so just ask. The trolls argue this registration is an infringement on our civil liberties – without any supporting data or facts. ‘Trolls’ never quote links to facts.

Volken Bozkır, President of the United Nations General Assembly, perhaps said it best when he said ‘during this pandemic, the most vulnerable have been the hardest hit ... We must increase our resilience. We must work together and take an integrated approach to health, hunger, climate, and equity crisis — no one is safe from COVID-19 until everyone is safe’.

The answer – do not believe what you read on social media or hear repeated in casual conversations – check the facts and check with a reliable source – for example, the Federal Government’s Health site. Do not let the fear mongers and trolls destroy you or your way of life.