Opinion Essay on Vaccination of Coronavirus

After almost half a year of arduous battle against COVID-19, we finally see some hopeful prospects of vaccines. I have no serious concern on the development and the production of the vaccines, but the adoptions of them by nations all over the world.

Mistrusts between countries may slow down the spread of vaccines. Few years ago, an African country renounced the use of American vaccine against an epidemic in that country. Many leaders of the villages and cities in this country believed that the vaccine is a contraceptive drug that used to dwindle down the birth rate of this country. This might seem quite unreasonable, however, this happened after 9/11 at which America waged war on Islamic terrorists. That African country's population, as I remembered, mainly consists of muslims; therefore, its people in authority renounced the vaccines. As a result, the epidemic exacerbated.

Rumors on the Internet might also work against the wide adoption of vaccines. Nowadays, social media and news are abounded with conspiracy theories spreading with the speed of light. In the afternoon, you saw a piece of news on CNN; then, the next day’s morning, you would see it posted on the homepage of social media in China. Therefore, if someone, especially a person in power, creates unfounded statements against vaccines from another country, this would presumably postpone the adoption of vaccines of another country, while patients are dying in hospital. If several countries developed vaccines at the same time, the rumors from authorities might also cause "biased-purchasing" in which “who’s producer” is a more important question than “how effective it is”.

After the pain-staking research and development, vaccines will ultimately have to deal with people’s suspicion. Careful regulatory of messages on the Internet, and scientifically-based examination will be required to solve this problem.