LETTER: Unvaccinated wrongly accused

I am dismayed to see the Business Day editorial using its authoritative position to accuse the vaccine-free individuals in this country of the demise of the economy, socially and economically, including loss of jobs (“Jab refusers are holding back the economy”, December 10).

“The time to hold unvaccinated people accountable for the economic, social and health costs is here,” it says.

This is fearmongering and it is accusatory to point at scapegoats for the state of the pandemic and the economy.

“The implications are terrifying, as we have seen with the discovery of the new heavily mutated Omicron variant,” you write.

The fourth wave of the virus, with the Omicron variant, has been described as less severe than the previous waves, with milder symptoms experienced. Yes, European countries reacted with knee-jerk alarm, also seeking to play the blame game pointing to SA as the origin. By now, we all know it was evident all over Europe.

It is irresponsible in a lead editorial to boost the fear of your readers by using emotive words like “terrifying” to describe a variant, thereby stimulating discrimination against the vaccine-free. The vaccine might prevent severe illness, and death, but it is the individual’s informed right to choose whether to take the vaccine or not.

Hospitals and ICU wards in SA are not overrun with Covid-19 cases at this time. Stop the blame game. Stop dividing the people. Vaccine-free people are not responsible for this pandemic, nor the consequences of the austere measures imposed by the government.

Sue Luck
Cape Town

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