Anti-vaxxers will sink future fights

It’s hard to believe that it was five years ago that reports were coming out of Wuhan in China about a new, virulent respiratory virus… and how the world would soon tumble into a vortex of grief, anger and disbelief.

Covid was the worst modern pandemic, claiming millions of lives, no matter what the conspiracy theorists – themselves fortunate not to catch it – may say about it being a hoax and some sort of plot by those who “control the world”.

The virus spread far more rapidly than others in the past, because the world has become a much smaller place, thanks to the ubiquity of modern transport and people’s desire to travel.

In the beginning, as scientists worked to understand the mechanism of the spread of the virus, there were punishing restrictions – including lockdowns, travel bans and mandatory mask-wearing – which, combined, not only devastated the global economy but also the lives of billions of people.

ALSO READ: Vaccine hesitancy becoming more entrenched among unvaxxed

Again, despite anti-vaxxers claiming the Covid vaccines were poisons, “gene therapy” and even a way to track people through embedded 5G chips, they were – in the opinion of the vast majority of the world’s medical experts – effective in cutting down the death toll from the virus.

Yet, questions need to be asked about the panic response of world governments to the crisis – and specifically whether the harsh measures were necessary.

This will not be the last pandemic humankind will have to face and, while it tries to predict where and what the next outbreak might be, the World Health Organisation is warning that, collectively, we are not ready enough.

It seems likely that the anti-science crowd – which exploded, thanks to social media being a vector for disinformation – will kick back against any measures, including vaccination… which will only make future pandemics much worse.

ALSO READ: Anti-vaxx lawyer, wife in court over conspiracy to murder