Twitterverse and Vaccinations

 Here is a recent tweet by a famous actor whose name I'll withhold:

At the time I took the screenshot, the tweet had been retweeted 6292 retweets and had received 68000 times. I'm sure the actor is sincere in his gratitude but one is left wondering if there any hope for humanity. The tweet conjures up this fantasy world in which medical professionals work frantically on a vaccine to save humanity from the brink of extinction. Very much the stuff of movies. 

Of course, any actor who questioned the efficacy of a vaccine would be putting his or her career in jeopardy. For example, we have this story (4th December 2020) from Newsweek:

Black Panther star Letitia Wright today made headlines for posting an anti-vaccination video on Twitter. The actress faced swift and intense backlash from followers leading to calls for her role as Shuri in the Marvel superhero movie to be recast. Following the news of COVID-19 vaccinations being rolled out in the United Kingdom, the British actress, 27, posted a YouTube video that featured a presenter named Tomi Arayomi saying: "I don't understand vaccines medically, but I've always been a little bit of a skeptic of them." The Black Mirror star has since defended her stance in replies to Twitter users.

At least one actor has the guts to speak out. Robert De Niro is another actor that comes to mind in that respect. There are not many who speak out however, and understandably most say nothing. There can be no open debate about vaccines. The official viewpoint is that they are all good and the latest batch of emerging COVID vaccines is being especially lauded. Even if a vaccine maims and kills, the good it does always outweighs the bad. Except when it doesn't as in the case of Dengvaxia in the Philippines:

The president of Sanofi Pasteur Inc., along with a former health chief and now politician, Rep Janette Garin have all been indicted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in the Philippines for reckless imprudence, resulting in homicide as a result of the deaths of children associated with the anti-dengue vaccine Dengvaxia. As a result of an ongoing investigation, government prosecutors found probable cause to file the charges against the named defendants as well as nine unnamed officials from the Department of Health, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine. Additional Sanofi Pasteur officials were indicted for violations of the Consumer Act of the Philippines. Source.

Figure 1

Such incidents are soon forgotten and, outside the Philippines, few would even know about it. Most probably, pharmaceutical companies responsible for any of the emerging COVID vaccines will be shielded from prosecution should anything go wrong when they come to market. Anyway the vaccinations are coming but it's interesting to note the variation in trust regarding vaccines amongst the different countries of the world. The Welcome Trust carried out a survey, the results of which are shown in Figure 1.

The Wellcome Trust, a U.K research charity, surveyed more than 140,000 people (ages 15 and up) in more than 140 countries about their views of science and major health challenges. And while eight in 10 people worldwide (79%) said that vaccinations are safe — and nine in 10 said their own children had been inoculated — higher-income pockets in Europe have less confidence in vaccines than lower-income countries in Africa.

Meanwhile there is this report in The Washington Post:

A wealthy Manhattan couple has emerged as significant financiers of the anti-vaccine movement, contributing more than $3 million in recent years to groups that stoke fears about immunizations online and at live events — including two forums this year at the epicenter of measles outbreaks in New York’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.

Bernard Selz and his wife Lisa are the couple referred to and Del Bigtree is the public face and chief executive of the Selz Foundation that the couple set up. I'd heard of Del Bigtree already from alternative news sources but hadn't realised the important role that he is playing in the anti-vaccination movement. He was co-producer of the film "Vaxxed".

Initiatives like these give a glimmer of hope and to my surprise I found that Michael Leunig has created some cartoons that have proved controversial. The mainstream media has done an excellent job of brainwashing the public so that a reflexive and hostile response is immediately elicited. No matter how much people may have liked his cartoons in the past, any questioning of the efficacy of vaccines meets with unalloyed and unthinking disapproval. The two tweets in Figure 2 are illustrative of the types of responses evoked:

Figure 2

The cartoon in question is quite mild in term of its opposition to vaccines. See Figure 3:

Figure 3

What's frustrating is that the opposition is based on a belief that what the medical mafia is telling them is unquestioningly correct. Anyone who doubts this is an anti-vaxxer and is to be ignored, ostracised or even punished.