Covid conveys a lesson for government

Two years ago, as the country sat frozen in the middle of the first hard lockdown, no one could have imagined that South Africa would be tossing away 90,000 doses of an expired vaccine… one which held out the best hope of beating Covid.

Yet, that is what happened yesterday. And in a few weeks, there will be thousands more vaccine jabs which will have to be destroyed.

Two years ago, we would have welcomed anything to ease the burden of the pandemic. Even a year ago, as the first vaccines started arriving, many were clamouring to get the programme going.

So what went wrong?

Anti-vaxx and anti-science propaganda – ranging from outright denial that Covid existed, to questioning death claims and PCR tests, as well as hysterical assertions that vaccines were killing and maiming people – flourished, thanks to our connected society’s love of social media.

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Many doubters “did their research” on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, choosing to ignore the myriad medical and scientific experts who presented evidence with which they disagreed.

However, the fact that the anti-science tsunami gained such momentum was also due, in large part, to the ineffectiveness of our government’s communication programmes around the coronavirus.

The head of the public health and nursing school at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Prof Mosa Moshabela, said government failed to put in place “people-centred” communication.

In addition, there is no doubt that the ANC’s martial-like approach to the pandemic – the military-style National Coronavirus Command Council is a good example – coupled with its brutal initial approach to those who violated the restrictions – led to pushback from many, who believed the Covid regulations were nothing more than an attempt to “control” the population.

The lesson for the government should be that persuasion and cooperation work far better than regulations and force during any sort of public emergency.