The decision yesterday by cabinet to open the floodgates, as it were, for vaccination of those over 18 years from today must, while slightly delayed, be welcomed.
The delay opened room for caustic conversations about why South Africans were not falling over themselves to vaccinate. This after our president called out the world for vaccine apartheid and demanded justice with regards to the delivery of vaccines to poor nations. Now the drugs are here and some are at risk of expiring.
The Sunday Times ran a lead story on Sunday about a troubling decline in the number of over 35s not lapping up the vaccine. What this does is make the over 18s to wonder why they should be excited about being vaccinating when their parents, who should know better, are going about their lives without much care about it.
In the end, and around the globe, it gets down to this: if vaccination doesn’t stop me from contracting the virus or spreading it, what’s the gain? Why do it? The answer is that the vaccine might just stop you from requiring a hospital bed or even dying from the virus. Their retort, so far, is that young people were not prioritised in this vaccination campaign because their bodies can fight off the virus with relative ease. More so for those without comorbidities. At any rate, didn’t we say that the recovery rate was, even without the vaccine, about 96%?
If so, what then is the vaccination case for young, fit (exercise-obsessed) and healthy (no comorbidities) 20-year-olds who are aware of such high recovery rates? This is where you need a nimble-footed government, supported by a knowledgeable communication firm (not that mumbo-jumbo stuff about Digital Vibes), to take this message to digital platforms the youth obsess about, to turn the tide.
What government was trying to achieve is noble, but the execution was terrible.
Only then, I suppose, will the right message get to the right people, on the right platforms at the right speed. But, no, with our government being our government, we had to wait to see that the numbers were down (from 275,000 to 175,000 vaccinations per day) before allowing the 18-year-olds to get their jabs. We are that sloppy and slow.
After all, even a simple thing like electing a speaker in parliament in 2021 still reveals 17 of our MPs were unable to cast their votes properly, leading to spoilt votes. Yes, allow that to sink in — the people whose rise to parliament is dependent on the rest of us voting for them correctly, can’t themselves even cast a vote correctly. Or could the 17 MPs be part of the so-called radical economic transformation (RET) group? If they are, at 17, they truly are a dying breed! But that is for another day.
In the end, though, this vaccine hesitancy we face is a failure of strategy.
What government was trying to achieve is noble, but the execution was terrible. The idea was to prioritise older, more vulnerable members of society in the provision of vaccines. The old and infirm came to the party early on. The middle strata — the over 35s and 50s — caught fire early but lost steam prematurely.
What was then required was a government whose decisions were data-driven. As the slightest hint emerged that the 275,000 vaccination per day peak was becoming increasingly unattainable, government, without creating alarm, needed to open the door for the 18-year-olds. This would have taken the peak to over 300,000, pleasing the commander-in-chief, but, importantly, generating and sustaining a positive environment about the vaccine uptake. That would have encouraged even the doubtful over 18s and 35s to vaccinate. But this required quick decision-making and an ability to use data to inform strategic twists and turns. Being nimble-footed is everything.
Our youth will wonder why older people don’t want to inoculate and they, who were not prioritised and whose bodies they were told can easily fight off the virus, must now step up.
More so because we had already seen the vaccine hesitancy patterns elsewhere in the world. We can’t argue that we were surprised. US President Joe Biden authorised, weeks ago, local authorities to pay an incentive to those who came forward to be vaccinated. This bribe was a bad tactic. Some asked themselves why would any government pay citizens to do something that benefits the citizens? It creates the wrong impression that this vaccination drive is not meant to benefit them but someone else (which is why that someone else is willing to pay) — and that feeds into the social media-fuelled conspiracy theories and fake news.
We just shot ourselves in the foot. Our government strategists must stop working from home! They missed an important opportunity. Our youth will wonder why older people don’t want to inoculate and they, who were not prioritised and whose bodies they were told can easily fight off the virus, must now step up. The fact that there are examples of side effects and people dying shortly after being vaccinated (ostensibly because they were Covid positive before the vaccination) doesn’t help.
The youth won’t understand that as the virus mutates, it becomes even more lethal for young people too. All the more reason for them to do the right thing. Some will want the jab when it’s already too late. It’s all a pity.
The task to convince the youth has become harder than it ought to have been. Thanks, in part, to the government, that behemoth that is a citadel of our hope, moving ever so slowly in this data-rich world it pains.
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