Is it likely? No. But could it happen? Could SA vaccinate 5-million elderly South Africans in the next six weeks?
If private health-care companies flex their huge muscles, Eskom keeps the coal dry and Ace Magashule doesn’t suspend Jacob Zuma’s trial by suspending himself into the courtroom by his suspenders to snatch up Number One and bounce him away to freedom, then … maybe?
I’m hedging, I know, but if the cautiously upbeat noises from the private sector are any indication, the health minister’s target might not be pure science fiction. What happens after that is, however, debatable, not least because we still don’t know how many South Africans actually want the jab.
In these polarised times we are told there are “vaxxers” and “anti-vaxxers”, a crude binary that ignores the fact that humanity’s attitude to vaccines seems to be stretched across a fairly broad spectrum, and which I think is doing more harm to the “vaxxer” project than its supporters realise.
The true anti-vaxxers need no introduction here, having made it clear who they are: people who accept just enough Western medicine to use it as a way to claim fatal flaws in Western medicine, co-opting the language of science (“studies”, “side-effects”, “genes”, “DNA”) to present an emotional position as objective fact.
However, one step along the spectrum we find the vax-alarmed, who believe medical science has mostly figured things out but is deliberately covering up some horrific shortcomings; the vax-concerned (who are alarmed but don’t want to cause a fuss); the vax-cautious (“I want to see more data”); and, in the middle, a small minority who seem to be genuinely vax-ambivalent.
Moving across onto the pro-vaccine side of the spectrum, we first encounter the vax-resigned (“We all die somehow, right?”), followed by the vax-curious, the vax-tolerant, the vax-positive and the vax-euphoric (“We’ve booked our flights!”).
After this, however, excitement too often lurches towards self-defeating righteousness, as the vax-evangelical (“anti-vaxxers are sinful!”) and the vax-totalitarian (“How dare you think those thoughts?”) start undoing the work of gentler advocates by getting involved in an entirely self-defeating shouting match with anti-vaxxers.
Each presents the other with a perfect embodiment of their respective worst nightmares: on the one hand, an addle-pated free-for-all in which superstition, anecdote and YouTube trump medical degrees and leave everyone exposed to the narcissistic whims of toddler-adults; on the other, a dystopian nightmare in which scientists herd people into 5G dipping pens in which they are doused with DNA-altering Cultural Marxism that switches off their free will and ability to see it like it is.
The volume of this shouting match, and its obvious pointlessness, can sometimes make one believe change is impossible. But while true anti-vaxxers are unlikely to be convinced, I still believe the vax-reluctant will eventually come around. It will, however, take time. Because it always does.
In our frantic present it’s easy to forget how slowly these things have happened in the past, and specifically how much time earlier generations had to rub along with the idea of new vaccines. The polio vaccine, for example, had been in development since the mid-1930s by the time it was eventually rolled out in the 1950s — and still managed to trigger protests.
Smallpox provides an even more extreme example. China had been experimenting with ways to immunise people for over 200 years before the concept of a vaccine arrived in Europe in the late 1700s. Yet a full two centuries after that new vaccines were still being denounced as newfangled devilry.
Covid-19 is two years old. The vaccines currently being rolled out are a year old. This has all happened painfully slowly by Twitter’s frenzied standards, but by the timescale of humanity it’s happened dizzyingly quickly.
Of course there are modern, political reasons for the new wave of mistrust. The West’s post-Watergate suspicion of the old authorities has been weaponised by populists who profit from discrediting expertise. A generation of TV hustlers, from beloved talk show hosts to preachers to politicians, has convinced humanity that what we believe to be true is more important than what is demonstrably true.
I am also not suggesting we should suffer fools. I understand the frustrations of seeing science deliberately misrepresented. But perhaps it’s worth remembering that most of the people who are suspicious of vaccines are that way not because they’re stupid or reckless but because they’re human.
Medicine is as close as we will come to a miracle, and there is a certain sense in being afraid of miracles. Nobody in the history of our cautious, suspicions species ever stopped being afraid by being told: “Don’t be afraid.” They stopped being afraid when they saw there was very little to be afraid of.
So get the shot. The rest will follow.
• Eaton is an Arena Holdings columnist.
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