Dear Editor,

DON’T you just love irony? The United Kingdom has a newspaper called “The Sun”, a Georgetown Marriage Counsellor files for divorce after a year of marriage, and then we have the APNU+AFC on the frontlines of a protest demonstration championing the rights of people.
What does the APNU+AFC know about the rights of people? Surely, this must be a newfound obsession, because the world saw them try to shanghai an election. Rights were grimacing under their blades and now they proclaim to be the summi salvatoris of the people. Irony, dear Editor.

Many APNU+AFC parliamentarians were part of a protest action earlier this month in Linden condemning government’s mandatory vaccination policy for specific sections of society. While I strongly agree that taking any vaccine must be a choice, it is the trivialising of that choice that bothers me. As one Journalist so eloquently put it: “It’s not the same as choosing fried rice over chowmein at Pagoda. It’s more than that.”

Has the government been able to identify the root cause of vaccine hesitancy in regions that have been consistently recording low vaccine uptake? APNU+AFC Parliamentarian, David Patterson said that low vaccine uptake is a result of people not trusting the government, but that is humorous as it is tragic.  COVID-19 is not only present in Guyana. For more than a year, we saw it wreak havoc around the world. So, while people may not trust the government, they can definitely agree that this virus is not to be trifled with. Do people trust the government enough to collect cash grants, Mr Patterson?

I personally do not think that our people are well informed about the vaccines, and to say that the government is doing enough to keep people educated may not be entirely true, with the evidence being the exhibited pushback. A lot is not necessarily enough.

The government may want to get to the bottom of the vaccine hesitancy by doing surveys and providing incentives to those who wish to get vaccinated. Mandating that people stay home the day they take a jab, may not be a bad idea. While that may not help with vaccine hesitancy, it will allow citizens to get time off to take a vaccine and return to their homes so they can recover from any adverse side effects. Imagine a mason having to take a vaccine and then return to work minutes later to lay blocks. Another suggestion is to deploy more mobile vaccination sites and information teams to communities to answer frequently asked questions regarding vaccination.

Editor, the minister said today, August 24, 2021, that a ‘large’ number of the persons hospitalised with COVID-19 is unvaccinated. While people have a right to choose vaccination, don’t we also have a right to say that our taxpayers’ dollars should not be spent to treat persons who callously throw caution to the wind by refusing a vaccine?  Which right takes precedence?

Yours sincerely,

M. Hope