Shameless politicization of vaccine
IF there is another scourge that festers among many Filipinos aside from the coronavirus disease of 2019 (Covid-19), it would be the idiocy that comes with blind political loyalties. This is seen in its most virulent form when people worship without question a certain political personality or a political view of the world to the point of abandoning any iota of reason and logic. And this is worse. At least, Covid-19 has a vaccine, but there is none for those afflicted with the blight of political idolatry.
Political idolatry is a social disease that causes those afflicted with it to lose reason. They are prone to commit logical fallacies and become vulnerable to faked narratives, even as they infect others with their pathological dispersal of disinformation and misinformation. They spread their disease in cyberspace, with social media enablers, with their thousands of followers, being the primary super spreaders. And one key symptom is their readiness to threaten with vitriol anyone who would show any hint of criticizing their political idol, and they do this with all the discursive obscenities they can muster.
They are a principal bearer of the Dunning-Kruger effect, where they turn their ignorance into a toxic gift that keeps on giving, and where they are most insistent about the rightness of their positions and the infallibility of their political demigod. One of the side effects of this malaise is possessing inconsistent beliefs, and being unable to even recognize that their political idol can be wrong. They are also known to be incurable in their predisposition to oppose human rights, unless it is theirs, and to be critical of free speech, unless it is supportive of their political idol and critical of his enemies.
And there is no other cohort where this scourge is most infectious and pathological than among the so-called diehard Duterte supporters, or DDS. Confronted with the undeniably horrendous actions and statements from their political principal, President Rodrigo Duterte, they respond with further idiocy and unbelievable chutzpah. Thus, in the face of a President that appears to do and say the wrong things every time he opens his mouth — from admitting having intentionally played hide and seek from us to spite his critics, to openly admitting that he is helpless against the Covid-19 pandemic, to telling us that more people will die — some loyal DDS opted to politicize the vaccine.
It is deeply offensive that DDS social media enablers have made an issue of people like me, who despite being critics of the President, have fallen in line in many centers opened by local government units (LGUs) to be vaccinated with Sinovac. They make it appear that we are hypocrites and that we are enjoying a benefit that we do not deserve.
They cannot comprehend that many of us had initial reservations about Sinovac because of its low efficacy but have changed our minds when we became better informed about the science behind it. We now know that while Sinovac is relatively ineffective in preventing mild cases of Covid-19, it is effective in preventing severe cases that lead to hospitalization and even death. They also cannot understand that many of us criticized the government for its initial prioritization