They are lying to you. They didn’t research anything! They don’t even know what it means to do medical research.
Watching YouTube videos and Googling things while sitting on the toilet, is not research.
Just imagine a surgeon offering to operate on you after having watched a few videos online.
How many videos would he have to watch for you to have confidence in his surgical ability?
Or imagine a building contractor extending your house, after having Googled how to do it.
You wouldn’t even trust a carpenter to install your kitchen cupboards, if he hasn’t done it at least once before.
So why are you entrusting your life to people who couldn’t tell the difference between a microscope in a laboratory and a petrol pump at a garage?
Why are you allowing people who barely passed standard grade maths, to give you their interpretation of statistics that even qualified statisticians would have trouble understanding?
I am addressing this issue again, because I learned this weekend that the vaccination numbers for the Cape Flats are extremely low.
And that means we run the risk of having another Christmas that is on partial (if not full) lockdown.
And while I am angry that there is so much vaccine hesitancy, I also understand the fear, the uncertainty and the confusion that’s preventing people from getting the jab.
I got into a conversation with an elderly man in a corner shop the other day.
He apologised for not wearing a mask and then proceeded to explain to me how unhealthy masks are.
“You breathe in all that bacteria and germs from your mouth,” he told me, without a hint of irony for the fact that it is your own, harmless bacteria and germs.
He then rattled off all the surgeries he’s had, as well as all his chronic ailments, including a severe heart condition.
I decided not to engage him, but I got the distinct impression that he wasn’t interested in taking the vaccine.
It’s for these reasons that I have decided that I am going to keep on ringing this bell.
I hope to dispel some of the arguments you might be exposed to in your family, at work, at your place of worship and of course on social media; arguments that on face value seem convincing, but are actually not thought through properly.
Take the one that keeps popping up, that Covid has a recovery rate of 97 or 98%.
It’s not entirely accurate, but let’s work with it, because it sounds so convincing.
That’s until you start thinking about it more deeply.
If – heaven forbid – you do get Covid, will you fall into the 98% that recover, or the 2% who don’t?
How will your comorbidities affect your recovery; will you end up suffering with long Covid?; will you infect vulnerable loved ones?
Are these gambles that you are prepared to take?
And did you know that 2% of the world’s population amounts to around 160 million people, which could include you.
It’s facts like these that anti-vaxxers ignore, or deliberately exclude from their arguments.
They stage protests on the Sea Point Promenade, while accusing the rest of us of attempting to silence them.
It’s hardly silent when they are the ones having regular loud protests, while the rest of us push back one-on-one on social media.
You have to wonder why they feel the need to march in support of freedom of choice, a choice that they have clearly already made for themselves.
So why protest?
Is it perhaps a need to express themselves in a world that generally ignores them and now they have found a cause to belong to?
Or is it a need to put their selfish and obsessive conceit on display?
The vaccines are safe and they are free.
People who say otherwise are trying to scare you for their own reasons.
Maybe they like sounding intelligent, or giving others the impression that they are smarter than everybody else, or that they can convince you to act in a certain way.
Any of that is more likely than them actually truly understanding what they are talking about.
I want to have a proper Christmas this year, please.
One where we can kuier lekker freely, visit relatives, braai without worries, go to the beach and maybe even go enjoy the klopse in town.
Don’t let these people scare you with nonsense.
You have been vaccinated before and you put worse things inside your body all of the time; things that you pay for, without caring about what’s inside.
Go get the vaccine and let’s reclaim our freedom.