I find it troubling that our seniors are being made to be
the scapegoat for Spore covid19 worsening situation. Recently a local site The
Independent News carries an article by an Australia
newspaper titled "Singapore
recovery stalled by 100K seniors who won't get jab".
Foreign press gets the impression that seniors are the
problem is because our government has been indirectly implying that seniors are
the one spreading the infection. Govt keeps highlighting senior’s infection
rate but not other age group. Looking at
the statistics, on average senior’s daily infection rate is around 12 to 15%
but the focus is always on them. We know that even with vaccination, one still
can get infected and die. Why is the
govt giving the impression that those seniors infected are not vaccinated?
Our local media recently interviewed seniors who are outside
saying they can’t stay at home as they are bored. It is skewed and biased as
they are interviewing small numbers of seniors who apparently enjoys being out.
But the damage is done – the message is seniors get infected and spreading the
virus because they move around too much.
Minister Ong has said that those 70 years old and above is
87% jab, while the vaccination rate of 60 to 69 years old is more than 90%. Our
senior aged 65 and above population is 639K, with the home vaccination program
and the campaign to get senior jab, the unvaccinated seniors numbers has dropped from 200k to 70k. MOH should POFMA The Independent site for publishing a divisive article and spreading untrue information. It is sad that even
local site is supporting biased views targeting our
seniors.
I wish to highlight that low vaccination rate amongst senior
initially is because the government did not realise many has mobility problem.
Besides, during the early stage of vaccination, only those healthy seniors were
encourage to jab, those with underlying health conditions were told to check
with their doctors and immune compromised were told not to jab. Seniors may not be able to ‘reset’ their
mindset when later government changed directive which encourage practically all
groups to be vaccinated. So why keep giving
the impression seniors are anti-vaccination? Why don’t government provide data
of those below 65 who are not vaccinated?
We are told that for those elderly, especially those with health problem they should be vaccinated to protected them from covid19. But now if vaccinated seniors with underlying health problem die – the blame is on their underlying health condition, not the vaccine ineffectiveness. It seems that for seniors who are infected or dying it is all due to their fault. Is this fair?
