Johannesburg – The anti-vax brigade is at it again.
The social media is awash with tales of woe against the Covid-19 vaccine.
I receive unsolicited WhatsApp videos on a daily basis purporting to show the side effects of the vaccine.
There are also memes, which are obviously doctored to elicit a particular response: fear. It’s a crazy world out there right now.
Although the government legislated fake news as criminal, there clearly is no policing in the worldwide web. We know that cowboy Bheki Cele would rather chase those who break the booze ban than do the hard slog of fighting crime.
Nothing slates Cele’s thirst than busting a bootlegger. In his criminology playbook, getting rid of booze would solve all the crime in our land. So, while our men and women in blue are on the stakeout at Sis Joyce’s shebeen to ensure she doesn’t sell a quart of beer, criminals are having a field day online.
I happen to have a bullshit sensor that detects fake news from a mile away and I know that most of the conspiracy theories about the vaccine are just hogwash.
According to them, the latest vaccine would implant a chip in our bodies to track our every movement. The world governments are all in it and so are the big corporate who want to influence our purchasing decisions.
The irony of this scaremongering is that our movements are already under surveillance. Our beloved gadgets in the form of smartphones have been snitching on us since they were invented.
My bank knows where I am at a particular time when I withdraw cash or swipe my card. Forensic detectives use our phones to determine whether our alibi can stand or not. They further know whether you were in contact with a hitman or not.
Hence every time you buy a SIM card, you are compelled by law to Rica. Without proof of residence or an identity document, a retailer is required by law not to sell you a SIM card. However, it is common knowledge that criminals have their ways and means to acquire a SIM card on the hog.
Our social media habits have also been fodder for companies to sell the information to political parties and corporate. The advertisements on your Facebook timeline do not happen by accident.
Your posts have been screened to predict which products are likely to appeal to you.
Your location is useful to pinpoint your marketability. So, if this latest vaccine enters that space, it would be joining many rogues who have been mining our information for years.
Then, of course, there are safety issues peddled by the anti-vax brigade. Doctored vials of the vaccine have already been posted, claiming the vaccine is targeted at Africa and will not be used by the West.
Apparently, the vaccine is also meant to be a birth-control mechanism and would destroy our fertility.
This infertility claim has hovered over most of the vaccines since time immemorial. But we were all vaccinated from birth to childhood and we are reproducing just fine.
Let’s be wary of the information we are bombarded with.
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