Coronavirus: ‘vaccine bubble’ incentives aren’t enough, Hong Kong must get creative to dispel rumours, share facts about jabs, experts say

Today’s SCMP

Richard Dawkins the other day put vaccine hesitancy down to Trump. Those terrible Orange Man supporters didn’t know what was good for them, the bigots. But it’s wider than that. Across Europe, the United Staes, and here in Hong Kong large chunks of folks are hesitant to take their jabs.

I put it down to governments themselves.  Early on Macron threw shade on AstraZeneca’s  effectiveness — or lack thereof, according to him. Germany and other European countries halted distribution of vaccines out of an “abundance of caution” when some were connected with blood clots at the rate of under one in a million. No concept of balance of risks — the risk for older folks of getting and dying of Covid is orders of magnitude greater than that of getting a blood clot.

Here in Hong Kong we stopped the rollout of the BionTech vaccine for a while because of some packaging concerns.

In America the robust vaccine jabbing rate — up to 3 million a day — plummeted 75% after the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was “paused” because of concerns — again — of blood clots.

When you’ve got governments doing all these pauses and cancellations, even if they then restart, the message people take away is “vaccines not safe”. 

Add to that there seems to be no other benefit to getting vaccinated, benefits like travel without quarantine, of foregoing a mask if you want. Joe Biden and VP Harris continue to wear masks. As do influencers in the likes of CNN, even wearing two masks outside when they are fully vaccinated.  

I get why they do that — to keep the message of masking, as most people are still not vaccinated -- but the message is negative, and a disincentive for people to get the jab. Here in HK, even if you’re fully vaccinated, you’re still out in quarantine if you happen to be unlucky enough to live in an apartment block where just one person tests positive. Sure there’s a bit more flexibility in bars for vaccinated people, but it’s so complex bar owners are not bothering. 

The message out by governments needs to be clear and twofold:  

1. The vaccines are incredibly effective and safe. And 

2. When you get it you can go about your life as you used to. (Even if the latter means perhaps a few fewer people mask up. Balance of risks again).

Here’s a list of the reasons people have here in HK for why they’re hesitant (click to enlarge):

From here

The top reason is concerns about safety and side effects. The main cause of that is governments. Not stuff floating around on social media. By governments. By their actions and attitudes. 

By the way: this household is not vaccine hesitant. We're all fully vaccinated (two jabs) with BionTech. We feel fine. But would like more people to get vaccinated, so we can all get closer to moving on. So far, only 15% are single jabbed, to date (14 May)