We need a jab on how to do things right
IS IT still worth paying attention to what Bill Gates has to say? Microsoft Corp, which he co-founded, is no longer the hottest and most influential technology company.
Besides, he stepped down as its CEO 16 years ago and relinquished the chairmanship in 2014. He is now “merely” a board member and a technology adviser.
These days, most of his time, energy and money is focused on the international health and education work done by the well-funded Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
And this is why Gates continues to be at the forefront of the forces that are shaping the world.
The foundation concentrates on a few tough issues, and one of them is poor health in developing countries. That has turned Gates into a leading voice on the importance of vaccines.
Indeed, he has a lot to say on the subject. In his blog in March last year, he addressed some people’s wariness of vaccines.
He noted that vaccines are at once the source of both super-fast ideas and super-slow ones.
“Tiny injections of misinformation about vaccines often race around the globe in minutes while, in the words of Mark Twain, ‘ the truth is still putting on its shoes’,” he wrote.
He pointed out that because the benefits of vaccination are invisible – that is, until there is an outbreak of disease – parents naturally tend to be more affected by fears that their kids may be harmed by immunisation jabs. So how do we deal with these fears?
This is what Gates recommended: “First, we cannot just dismiss them (the fears) as ignorant or ‘anti-science’. Second, I believe we have to accept that good news about vaccines is inherently slow and fears
tiny injections of misinformation about vaccines often race around the globe in minutes while the truth is still putting on its shoes. Bill Gates
are inherently fast.”
We are likely to be open to slow ideas when we hear them from people we know and trust. Maybe for most of us, Gates does not fit that description. But we are certainly more willing to accept the views of friends, family members, doctors and teachers.
The recent diphtheria outbreak in Malaysia has highlighted the fact that there are pockets of anti-vaccine people in our midst. They refuse vaccination due to religious reasons or because they worry about side effects.
The Government maintains that vaccination will not be made compulsory and that it will rely on education to encourage immunisation.
We can do our part too. We are friends, family members, doctors and teachers too. And it is in our best interest that a critical portion of our community is immunised against certain contagious diseases.
That way, there is little chance of an outbreak and lives will not be lost to those diseases.
Parents are not wrong to be protective over their children’s health. But if their actions are based on misinformation, they may in fact be risking the lives of their kids and others.