Here are some reasons for the majority of the population to remain unvaccinated:

Oh wait, there are no reasons for the majority of the population to remain unvaccinated.

Covid 19 vaccines have been available in Jamaica for about seven months. If you scroll down on my main page, you’ll see that it’s been nearly that amount of time since I last wrote on my Blog. I spent months working on articles for a nonprofit organisation (have a look at what I wrote: https://cornerstonejamaica.org/insight/).

Alas, I digress. The penultimate post before this one, which was made on March 21, is titled: ‘A Utilitarian View of Jumping the Vaccine Line’. How ironic it is that seven months ago some younger people were scrambling to get their vaccines before the elderly, leaving the elderly to be turned away because the vaccine supply for the day had run out, yet now our Prime Minister is having to plead with most Jamaicans to get vaccinated. What’s even more ironic is my said post highlighted the need for younger people to wait their turn, not jump the line and allow the elderly to get theirs first, yet this post is going to be about “begging” everyone to get vaccinated now.

One could try and argue that I have changed my mind about who should get vaccinated and about the application of my utilitarian view, but this is not the case at all. I have always believed that everyone should take the Covid 19 vaccine and I remain steadfast in my utilitarian view of the world. To quote from my own blog: Jeremy Bentham believed in “The greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people”. This is the essence of Classical Utilitarianism, which relies on each person promoting the overall good. Bentham thought that an action was bad when it led to unhappiness, without any redeeming happiness. It had no utility. “If a law or an action doesn’t do any good, then it isn’t any good.” Seven months ago, the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people did mean that first responders and the elderly should be vaccinated before everyone else. Now, with many more vaccine doses available and many more sites where Jamaicans can get vaccinated, the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people will be achieved if Jamaicans become fully vaccinated. Of course, children under 12 years old have not yet been approved and those 12-17 years old can only take the Pfizer vaccine when the second batch arrives in Jamaica. That said, the rest of you should get vaccinated now!

Here is why a utilitarian philosophy should apply. I’m pretty sure you’ve all heard of the variants Delta and Mu (real pains up the backside!), to name a few. Anyway, viruses mutate, so it’s not surprising these variants are spreading rampant across the world. Viruses get a chance to mutate and spread when they have hosts. That’s us! To be more specific, they are much more likely to mutate and spread in an unvaccinated host. That’s you, you unvaccinated person! Unless the majority of the world population is fully vaccinated with the Covid 19 vaccine, the Covid 19 virus will continue to spread and mutate, spread some more and mutate again. Yes, even the fully vaccinated people can catch Covid, BUT they are less likely to get sick, less likely to be hospitalised and significantly less likely to die. Their bodies’ viral loading is lower if they get Covid, however, they too are potential hosts and can spread the virus. This right here confuses many, particularly those who are unvaccinated. Why should I get the vaccine when I could still get Covid after taking the vaccine? I’ll tell you why. You don’t want to die!

The only way to draw brakes on a pandemic such as this is for the vast majority of the world’s population to be fully vaccinated as quickly as possible. Yes, the speed at which we get vaccinated matters. When there is a slow uptake of the vaccine, the virus still has millions of unvaccinated hosts, billions if you look worldwide. When the covid vaccines were developed and tested, Delta and Mu didn’t exist. Had the vast majority of the population been vaccinated in an expeditious way, Delta and Mu are most likely not to have come into being. Sure, vaccine supply has prevented millions of people, particularly in the African and South American continents, from taking vaccines, but we in Jamaica have the vaccines and there is no reasonable reason why so many thousands within our population are flatly refusing to take the vaccine. Our government recently had to throw away 60,000 expired doses of AstraZeneca, due to vaccine illiteracy (yes, I just called you unvaccinated people vaccine illiterate!), and there is a considerable chance that they will be in the same position very soon. What’s going to happen if you continue to remain unvaccinated? You give the virus a greater chance to mutate! Then, these mutations spread and, what could potentially happen, if the majority remain unvaccinated, is the virus mutates so many times that the vaccines, which the rest of us have taken, will become ineffective. So, getting fully vaccinated within the quickest time possible is our chance to put a halt to this pandemic. It is our chance to save our people. It is our chance to save the world population. It will indeed produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people.