Ole Talk and the COVID-19 vac­cine: What so­cial me­dia doc­tors won’t tell you.

In the re­mote sea­side vil­lage, an­oth­er day drifts to a close. In­tense sun­shine gives way to cool­ing ocean breezes. Tired women walk home car­ry­ing bags of gro­ceries; chil­dren kick an old foot­ball. El­ders sit on their front porch­es, watch­ing as vol­un­teers chat with res­i­dents about the COVID-19 vac­cine. Be­neath the charm of this place lies an­oth­er, more un­set­tling sto­ry. In­creas­ing­ly, gen­er­a­tions of fam­i­lies are dy­ing from coro­n­avirus. Why? Re­fusal to take the vac­cine.

Facts ver­sus in­for­ma­tion from so-called Med­ical Ex­perts of So­cial Me­dia (MESS)

Vil­lagers chal­lenge the vol­un­teers. How was the vac­cine de­vel­oped so quick­ly? If the vac­cine is so ef­fec­tive, why are peo­ple who took it still dy­ing?

For­tu­nate­ly, re­spect­ed mem­bers of the vil­lage - an ex-tem­po cham­pi­on, a na­tion­al foot­baller and a young doc­tor – are part of the out­reach. They are all vac­ci­nat­ed and very con­cerned about their com­mu­ni­ty. They re­mind the vil­lagers that peo­ple take med­ica­tion for high blood pres­sure or even the com­mon cold, trust­ing it would help them with­out know­ing all the in­gre­di­ents. They ex­plain that the COVID-19 vac­cine con­tains on­ly a weak­ened ver­sion of the virus, not the virus it­self. They draw sim­ple pic­tures to demon­strate how it helps their bod­ies build up de­fences against be­com­ing ill.

The vol­un­teers re­mind that the vac­cine sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­proves our chances of sur­vival, but some peo­ple could have health com­pli­ca­tions which re­duce the ef­fec­tive­ness of the vac­cine. How­ev­er, in Trinidad and To­ba­go 90 per­cent of peo­ple need­ing COVID-19 emer­gency care are not vac­ci­nat­ed.

An old­er woman takes their fly­er. “Chile, I re­mem­ber when your moth­er use to teach in the pri­ma­ry school. Now look at you eh? A doc­tor.” The com­mu­ni­ty talks with the vol­un­teers long in­to the evening, ap­pre­cia­tive that they had tak­en the time to share facts about the vac­cine. Many lives had al­ready been lost, so the vil­lagers lis­tened …

Vac­ci­nate to­day...live to­mor­row!

Did you know?

- Glob­al re­search in­to SARS (the virus that caus­es COVID-19) and MERS start­ed as ear­ly as 2002, with the emer­gence of the SARS epi­dem­ic. This re­search pro­vid­ed the ex­pe­ri­ence and ground­work to de­vel­op a vac­cine for COVID-19.

- For many decades pri­or to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, sci­en­tists de­vel­oped vac­cines us­ing the mR­NA and ade­n­ovirus tech­nolo­gies.

- The out­break of Ebo­la in 2015 led to the for­ma­tion of the Coali­tion for Epi­dem­ic Pre­pared­ness In­no­va­tion (CEPI) in 2017, a glob­al part­ner­ship to de­vel­op bet­ter strate­gies for deal­ing with sim­i­lar out­breaks. That col­lab­o­ra­tion fa­cil­i­tat­ed a glob­al ef­fort by lead­ing sci­en­tists and re­searchers to ex­pe­dite the de­vel­op­ment of safe and ef­fec­tive COVID-19 vac­cines.

Choose the facts. Choose life.