Vaccines

“It may be there are valid medical reasons to suspect the effectiveness or safety of the anti-dengue vaccine. But the manner with which Dengvaxia was questioned made polio inevitable.

Chief public attorney Persida Acosta complains too much about her fame.

Listening to her in the last few days berating social media for “congratulating” her for “reviving” infectious diseases amuses us to no end, making us grin uncontrollably with mischievous irony.

It is not a whimsy this mischievous irony, since it is the same social media, with its out-of-control trolls, which catapulted her into public consciousness as the staunchest knight against Dengvaxia, the anti-dengue vaccine.

To now hear her thunder “Trolls are out using (the Department of Health’s) alleged outbreaks!” sounds loudly as an ironic counterpoint — some say comeuppance unfortunately — of her well-groomed public fame as a public heath advocate.

Ms. Acosta shouldn’t complain too much then since, if her public health advocate fame came courtesy of social media trolls, the prospect of her reputation in tatters is also the costly cruel handiwork of the same trolls.

The troll’s social media cruelty, of course, isn’t something we aren’t familiar with. By now we often come across people bewailing social media cruelty with “I failed to see what was coming, even though everything I needed to know was there, before my very eyes!”

All this, of course, is true only on hindsight when the ill effects of past social media cruelty had wreaked havoc. It is also on hindsight why we are unsympathetic to the fate of the likes of Ms. Acosta who consciously or unconsciously made use of the same social media cruelty.

What I mean here by social media cruelty isn’t only the feast of crude curses which uncontrollably gushed in social media in the recent past, but also on the fact that the same curses inadvertently fueled the subsequent deviance of arrant ignorance and stupidity.

If many found the “freedom” to curse — used in many a partisan political pitch battle directed at political opponents — as exhilaratingly popular, the same “freedom” also relentlessly led to massive distrust of political and social institutions.

Distrust which should have been jettisoned early if only many of us realized then it was more practical to keep political and social institutions intact, if only to prevent untoward incidents against public welfare.

The reemergence of infectious diseases, particularly the polio virus, is the perfect illustration of this variety of political populism going awry.

As is familiar by now, the issue with polio comes after the widespread distrust of the anti-dengue vaccine. It may be there are valid medical reasons to suspect the effectiveness or safety of the anti-dengue vaccine.

But the manner with which Dengvaxia was questioned made polio inevitable. The manner here, of course, is the fact the Dengvaxia controversy was partly a game of political partisanship, with base propaganda thrown all around all over social media. A partisanship with the clear political intent of embarrassing a previous administration.

All wouldn’t have really mattered if everything had stayed with politics. No one, however, expected the controversy would go on all the way and make many dispense with sound medical advice about other life-saving vaccines, eventually leading to a public health crisis.

Social media users sharing unfounded accusations, of course, are as equally guilty here as any troll for mindlessly exacerbating our present public health woes.

Still, while we acknowledge this public health crisis involving vaccines, this should not in any way paralyze us. Such a crisis should prod us all the more to acknowledge the disaster, live with it and actively correct it as much as we can.

Nothing, therefore, should prevent each one of us, at least on social media, to individually give back to our country, shoring up the lost confidence of our public health system.

And giving back is not about politics. It is not about being “DDS” or “dilawan.” It is all about being responsible citizens persevering at correcting people’s mistaken fear of vaccines.

Perseverance is necessary in face of the fact there are still many who are still making the controversies over vaccines as all about political struggles, with many of them committed to defeating opponents whoever they are, whatever it takes.

The time for engaging on social media with these shady characters is over. It is time for us, here in the neutral middle ground, to reassert our voices. Because it is only with our neutral voices are we able to get more people to have their young children vaccinated against polio and other infectious diseases.

Perseverance is also necessary because there is still too much fear about life-saving vaccines. A fear summed up by a disheartening social media post of a young mother who said she would rather have her child have polio because of what she had heard about Dengvaxia.

While it is easy to dismiss this young mother as a heartless parent mindlessly gambling her child’s future well-being, we cannot, in the end, also blame her.

She, like many other mothers, is a victim of the tragic turn in our society where medical science became collateral damage in the game of political warfare.

Enough then of all these “in the name of politics” nonsense.

Meanwhile, we also need to reassert our voices since government functionaries leave us no choice. Government functionaries are still at each other’s throats, enmeshed in the blame game that’s unmistakably a concern with their personal reputations. So much so they forget they have a public health crisis needing quick and massive public information to resolve.

I also often wonder why these functionaries are so besotted with their reputations when, after 33 months from now, their reputations won’t matter one whit once a new administration takes over. And it is in that hopefully sober time where they can be accurately gauged on what they had done or did not do.