DR MAXWELL ADEYEMI

When the covid-19 pandemic started in late 2019, there was an uneasy calm across the globe, eventually the unseen enemy reached our shores in early 2020 and subsequently the World Health Organization (WHO) announced a global pandemic.

What followed on social media and mainstream media were barrages of information, misinformation, scientific news, conspiracy theories, truths, lies, good, bad and ugly pieces of write-ps and videos in a concoction that was daily consumed by discerning as well as gullible persons all around the world.

As we speak, there is still a lot of information that is being released, especially on social media, that is toxic, confusing, scary and unsafe for consumption. Many of such are deliberately misleading, some are mixed with half-truths and peddled with downright fabrications that have no place in sane reasoning or scientific analysis.

Just like people spending time to demonise their political opponents during election campaigns, and rival groups twisting words and information to make the others look bad, many people have invested time, energy and resources to promote anti-vax agenda to create fears and vaccine hesitancy.

Unfortunately, many people are innocently consuming this information without doing their own research, readings or fact-checks. There is a need to do your own checks, or seek information from relevant health professionals if you are concerned about some of these falsehoods been propagated, so you can be properly informed to make good judgments and decisions.

Some fears expressed

1.People are being used for trials: The insinuation that people taking the vaccines are being used as guinea pigs for vaccine trials is unfounded, because all the vaccines available now have gone through various stages of trials involving thousands of participants in many countries and passed the required regulations, like all other vaccines in the past before approval. Moreover, the WHO will not approve such vaccines without passing through the requisite processes and procedures.

2.Vaccines were developed too fast: Some argue that the vaccines were developed in less than one year and therefore unsafe. The fact is that development of the vaccines has been an ongoing process for more than a decade; vaccine research on corona viruses has been taking place for about 30 years.There are at least seven strains of corona viruses, there are SARS-Cov 1[SARS disease] MERS, SARS-Cov-2[Covid-19] just to mention a few, so SARS Cov-2 or Covid- 19 is not the first corona virus. Work has been done to develop vaccines for these family of viruses using different technologies. When the pandemic broke out, the race to get a vaccine was focused on fine-tuning the technology, funding and fixing the puzzles in the vaccine-making processes.

3. Microchip in vaccine: Anti-vaxxers are infusing fears on the population by claiming that chips are implanted in the vaccines. This is misleading and based on the fact that