Ridiculously blaming media over vaccine hesitancy
- The People's Chronicle Editorial :: June 29, 2021 -

THAT misinformation always travels faster than facts could be comprehended from Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging the people to shun Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy and get inoculated to protect themselves from the coronavirus.

Contrary to the Prime Minister trying to allay public apprehension over the vaccination programme through his monthly Maan Ki Baat radio talk, chief minister N Biren had been expressing suspicion that reports published in a state's daily regarding adverse effect of vaccination in the distant the United States rather than effectively utilising the government machineries to instil confidence among the masses that the vaccine being administered in the state is safe and efficacious against the contagious disease.

While swearing at the local media for carrying the US story, which was also published widely both in India and across the world, seems to be a desperate bid to shift the blame on others for failure of the establishment to jab as many beneficiaries as possible or avoid wastage ofthe vaccine in the first few weeks of the vaccination exercise, the chief minister's recent remark that his government might bar unvaccinated people from commercial activities is also certain to have created strong resentment among the public.

As media houses have been playing their role in continuously disseminating information related to preventive measures and vaccination there is no valid reason to suspect that the media fraternity is undermining the government's initiatives to curb the pandemic.

With almost all the working journalists and technical staff taking the vaccine, it is hard to digest that the government is suspicious of the media houses fuelling vaccine hesitancy.

In view of scribe bodies AMWJU and EGM categorically rejecting the chief minister's viewpoints and pointing out that the particular news report was carried in both national and international dailies, the threat to file FIR against a local daily without verifying the facts is not only outrageous but also indicates that the head of the state believes in feedbacks from his loyal but ill-informed coterie.

Had the CM tried to allay fears among citizens, which is natural as the contagion and the vaccines developed to counter the health threat are both new, and explicitly explained that people should not follow the rumours being spread against the vaccination then it might have inspired many more to take the jab and contribute to the government's fight to contain the spread of the deadly disease.

Moreover, his assertion that every eligible person must take the vaccine in order to sustain livelihood activities is also an affront to the recent decree by the Meghalaya High Court that vaccination should be voluntary and forcible jabbing amounts to violation of rights of the citizen.

It is high time for the government to understand that the public would be curious, especially with an unprecedented illness like the Covid-19 and its preventive initiatives and that the reluctance to take the jab is not limited to Manipur only.

The fact is India has so far administered 32.36 crore vaccine doses overtaking 32.33 crore doses in the US but only 5.6 per cent of its adults have taken both doses whereas 40 per cent of the entire population in the US have been inoculated.