I spent last month in my husband’s home country. The main purpose of the trip was for us to get vaccinated and to ensure that his parents did the same. At the time of travel, vaccine priority had not reached my age group. Having the choice as to whether to get inoculated has always been important to us, not necessarily because we don’t trust science, but because we also wanted to ensure that my husband would have a vaccine that wouldn’t hamper his work-related travel.
To be able to uproot your life for a month to ensure you get the vaccine you want is a privilege I don’t take for granted. The decision for us had always been an easy one, our only concern was to get a vaccine that would be widely accepted. We experienced no side effects. For us, it was the easiest thing apart from the tiring drive to get to my husband’s home country.
The task that remained in front of us, which proved to be the most difficult thing my husband and I had to do, was to convince his parents to take the vaccine. They had both contracted COVID-19 earlier in the year. They were both hospitalized and required oxygen. Naturally, we thought they would be first in line to get the vaccine after their experience. On the contrary, that experience propelled them to think the coronavirus was indeed a beatable infection.
They had both been reluctant to take the vaccine even prior to contracting the virus. Their main concern was the lack of authority when it came to informing the public about the pandemic and what strategies were being implemented. The message got lost in translation mostly for the older generation, who tend to trust their community leaders and religious leaders.
My husband’s parents are conservative people who believe in hierarchy. We are all grown adults but they somehow still see us as children who are married. Even after they had contracted the virus, they did not tell us straight away.
There were several factors now compounded that would develop their resistance, including the lack of community authority to advise and the absence of listening to younger folk. My in-laws aren’t anti-vaxxers. Their choices were, however, influenced by cultural and social factors that have nothing to do with medicine, and everything to do with communication and who they want to communicate with. The end goal was to get them vaccinated before we left and to do that we realised that we had to understand them fully to convince them.
I wish everyone would take the vaccine once it’s safe for them. I wish everyone had support to help them make informed choices and as much I am aggravated by those who are reluctant to take the vaccine, what I know for sure from my experience is that force, isolation and dismissal of concerns only fuels arguments, suspictions and distrust.
I get that debating people who are hesitant is energy consuming but to argue with their choices is entirely counterproductive. In a polarized society like Guyana, where the COVID-19 pandemic has been called a hoax, vaccine hesitancy has been shamelessly promoted in some cases for ulterior motives.
There are a plethora of reasons why people are hesitant and while we may have experienced smooth sailing it doesn’t mean everyone else is capable of this. We should, at the very least, expect our public health officials to understand this and to meet those who are hesitant halfway.
