And what if the anti-vaxers are right?

The peoples of the advanced countries of the world are coming under increased pressure to take the anti-Covid vaccine, which are seen as the only way to bring the devastating pandemic under control.

There are, as we know, various types of this vaccine which have been hurriedly developed by various production enterprises across the world. Not all follow the same template and there are various sites on the Internet which explain the different makes and that compare them with each other.

No real comparison can be made so far, both because the number of people who undertook the trials varies from one another, as also with the geographical spread of the test, etc.

Then there are differences on how the vaccine has to be administered with one requiring very low temperatures, which puts it out of reach of some areas of the population. There are also differences between the prices. All the vaccines we know of come from Big Pharma.

The vast majority of the peoples of the advanced countries as well as their governments are rushing to push the vaccines to their populations, starting with the vulnerable, so that we can all relax and get back to life as we used to live it before February 2020. People all over the world have grown tired of the Covid restrictions.

Yet these efforts have been met by a certain resistance not just by some of the elderly but also by some people who refuse to be pressured to take the vaccine. These are the anti-vaxers who in the more extreme variants are being inspired by anticapitalist rhetoric or claims there is a deeper plot afoot to, as the paint daubed on the Curia said, ‘depopulate the world’.

Many who are still reluctant to take the jab may not go that far – they may be reacting against the pressure that is being exerted, especially if a vaccination certificate is introduced without which one will not be able to travel or go abroad, or even, as has been suggested, go to the pub or even the supermarket. There are many people who would resist such pressure, although to be fair the restrictions we faced in the lockdown were draconian themselves.

Others are still not convinced the vaccines have been tested enough to remove all suspicion of side-effects at a later stage. There have been the well-known few cases of thrombosis caused by one of the vaccines which have led people to reject all vaccines.

Others may have been put off by the flaws, as they see it, in the administration of the jab, either by the lack of adequate precautions where you have crowds of people waiting, or by the way the jab may be administered by the nurses hurriedly imported when the pandemic was at its worst or when Maltese nurses went to work abroad.

Then again some might prefer to get the vaccine in private clinics or hospitals rather than in public health institutions and ask if there can be free choice in the matter. And I ask if non-Maltese staying here can get vaccinated on the Health Service.

And others may argue that the surest way to avoid the virus is to strictly observe the few and simple rules about social distancing, cleanliness and the wearing of masks which we, or at any rate, many of us have been following and that if everyone observes these we can get rid of the spread of infections.

The pressure that is being exerted, or which may be exerted in the future, does look extreme, but we already have experience of such mandatory rules regarding, for instance, vaccination of infants and we have assimilated this with no problem at all. But to force churches, as is being suggested abroad, to turn away the unvaccinated, is unacceptable.

The debate goes on and on, which is not a bad thing, as it keeps governments and Big Pharma on their toes and stops them from riding roughshod over the citizens.

In the long run, however, as happened in other epidemics, the virus will get weaker and we will sooner or later revert to normalcy. It’s called mass immunity.