There is a popular saying that prevention is better than cure, and that's the essence of vaccination, one of the medical practices in today's world. Vaccines are not a cure; they do not serve as a treatment for any disease. Instead, they fortify our immune system, giving us an edge against infectious diseases that can strike unexpectedly.
Vaccination plays the important role of preventing infectious disease and protecting public health, not the other way around, as some people thought.
If we look down in history, vaccines have played a crucial help to the human race as we’ve struggled with different infectious diseases over centuries. Vaccination was a major breakthrough in the medical field when Edward Jenner first came up with a vaccine against smallpox in the late 1700.
We can’t undermine the importance of this medical success. While some of these diseases just popped out of nowhere, there are those we believe to have been created intentionally and unintentionally, yet we had to depend on vaccines to prevent the widespread of these diseases.
But so many things have changed since the first invention of vaccine, causing a lot of people, including me, to doubt the effectiveness of vaccines, especially in third-world countries struggling with different diseases despite opening our doors for vaccination. There is a different news of vaccines doing a great job when reading online, but in reality, it’s the other way around.
I stand to be corrected and do not want to sound political, but with everything happening in the world today, vaccines now sound like a weapon or tools in the hands of some powerful people.
So many times, we’ve heard stories about vaccination being used for a different intent, but it ends up as a misinformation claim because we don’t have strong proof, which doesn’t mean all of these stories are completely fake. This reminds me of another adage that says without fire, there won’t be smoke, and for stories like that to circulate, something very related must have inspired it.
A Personal Experience with Vaccination.
Sometimes in 2006, some medical officials showed up with boxes and vaccines in our school. After addressing the students about their purpose in the school, we were all vaccinated.
It wasn’t long after the vaccination we heard stories that those vaccines were used for birth control due to the high increase in Nigeria’s population, and the most annoying part was that we didn’t get any information from the government countering those stories. This experience left a lasting impact on not just me but many Nigerians, fueling our doubts about vaccine intentions.
The COVID-19 Controversy.
When COVID-19 hit the world back then, it was pretty nasty, and things escalated very quickly. Scientists and doctors had to come up with vaccines generating millions of dollars in profit within a very short period. Surprisingly, there was a high spread of this disease, claiming millions of lives in countries that had more than enough access to the COVID-19 vaccine.
While in many African countries where the vaccines arrived late or didn't arrive at all, there were very few cases reported, and none in some places, but their governments had to lie just for the sake of getting COVID-19 relief items (palliative). The whole COVID-19 drama look staged and it caused many people to reject the vaccine since we weren't sure about the intent, whether it's political weapon or just profit driven.
The vaccine had to be imposed on us, but they failed even though we weren't certain of the consequences. Up till this moment, I am not sure I’ve read any article justifying why people in some parts of the world had severe losses despite the vaccine while it’s the other way around in countries without enough vaccines.
Balancing Trust and Skepticism
I am not condemning the efforts of doctors and scientists, but there are so many things happening in that field that we don’t know about. Despite my doubts, my baby still got vaccinated after birth, and that tells how many of us trust the system but aren’t just sure about the intention of several vaccines.
If possible, a complete transparency in the purpose and production of the vaccine can help the world develop trust in vaccination again.
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