Vaccine wary are victims of Trump’s fake news legacy
a.brown@dailyrecord.co.uk Twitter: @anniebrownword
WE WILL be paying the price for Donald Trump long after Joe Biden swears on the Bible at today’s inauguration.
Under Trump, facts became fake news and all pretence of commitment to the truth vanished.
The new US President can reverse some of Trump’s most damaging policies, introduce mask mandates, remove the travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries, and have the country rejoin the Paris Climate Accord.
But there is no executive order which can halt the contagion of conspiracy, falsehood and mistrust now embedded in not only American culture but our own.
Trump may not have been patient zero but he has been the most effective of carriers in the pandemic of misinformation.
The media was culpable in the rise of Trump, finding his audacity and absurdity too tantalising a headline to ignore.
Those us who found him unpalatable, sneered at the joke, underestimating the earnest support of his followers.
During this pandemic, when public trust is critical, the damage is lasting.
Anti-vaxxers, Covid conspirators and dark forces like QAnon have reach across the Atlantic and pulled the gullible in.
QAnon follows the ridiculous theory that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media. Social media and opinion polls indicate there are potentially millions of people who believe in at least some of the bizarre theories offered up by this particular cult.
And though the movement may not have a stronghold in Scotland, its tributaries of false information have flowed into social media and the repercussions are potentially deadly.
Facebook posts dressed as plausible facts, are shared in ignorance between people who are otherwise rational and they have spread mistrust.
Now, vital frontline workers are refusing the vaccine. One in three people throughout the UK have seen or heard messages from anti-vaxxers trying to get the public to refuse the jab.
Vaccine uptake for care home staff is at 55 per cent, while it is at 80 per cent for residents.
Almost a third of care workers in Glasgow say they are worried about getting the vaccine.
We need 70 per cent of the population to be vaccinated in order to end the pandemic.
Anti-vax messaging is having a real life impact, not just in the UK but across Northern Europe, with France one of the most vaccine-hesitant countries in the world.
It would be wrong to lump the vaccine hesitant in with the conspiracy theorists, for what are unfounded but natural fears.
Vaccination scepticism has been with us since the small pox jab in the 19th century and the myths perpetuated around the MMR jab still linger in the public consciousness.
The Pfizer vaccine was tested on upwards of 20,000 people in phase-three trials.
The internationally trusted regulator, the MHRA, looked at all the evidence and determined the vaccine is safe. But dismissing concerns of the vaccine hesitant is unfair and patronising.
The GMB union’s approach of education is the only way to reassure care workers that the vaccine is safe and lead them to an informed choice.
Finger wagging is the last thing exhausted, already anxious, care workers need when our understanding and support would serve them better.
Carers are owed the truth and so much more for the long months they have placed themselves on the frontline for all of us.