Welcome to my blog and another wonderful edition of the Hive Learner's featured post. Vaccination is one vital thing that helps to keep us healthy as well as help prevent the spread of diseases, but welcome to my country, where vaccination is seen as a death sentence or something that will eventually end their lives instead of help to keep them healthy. Every vaccine has a conspiracy theory surrounding it; it is either religious people come up with one or just the masses come up with one that will stand as a hindrance and cause people not to take it. Convincing or getting people to take vaccines on this side of the world is really difficult, if it is not a religious belief that is stopping them, then it is the elders of a community claiming they are protecting their people and sometimes even person beliefs.
Nobody wants to take a risk that will probably end their lives, and most of these conspiracy theories about vaccines and vaccinations threaten the lives of those who take them, and that causes a lot of people to back off and not want to take any vaccines. Growing up in the northern part of my country, I was fortunate to see different people, different religions, and different communities come up with different conspiracy theories about vaccines. A particular clan then claimed that a baby died after being vaccinated and has since stopped taking vaccinations since they believed the intention for vaccines was to eliminate them.
Even vaccines like polio and meningitis for babies, they refuse to take until there was a meningitis outbreak, but then it was too late, as they had lots and lots of kids not able to walk anymore, and taking the vaccines then was a waste, and the affected kids will have to live the rest of their lives in wheelchairs. They had to realize the importance of vaccines after causing so much pain to the affected kids.
Also, during the coronavirus pandemic, many Nigerians did not take the vaccine because we had rumors that the vaccine was created with the intention to reduce the African population, and then we kept hearing news about how a lot of people died after taking the vaccine, social media was a tool used to spread this news and since we were jobless and always online they got us right where they wanted us.
Some even went as far as saying the vaccine had metal and a magnet in it; after taking it, you can keep a spoon or any metal on the spot where you were given the vaccine, and the magnet in it will attract the spoon or metal, causing it to stay on your arm and not fall off. As far as vaccines are concerned, in African countries there is so many crazy story that flies around concerning them.
Vaccines are no death sentence; they were created with good intentions and not to reduce the population of any country, nor are they intended to wipe out any clan. I take vaccinations seriously because I have seen what not taking any does to people who fail to. Even when a chickenpox vaccine was given to students in my high school, many students refused to take it for fear of being injected with something they do not know, while the rest of us continued coming to school. They were asked to stay home until the chickenpox they were suffering from cleared off. Vaccines help build your immune system and help you to resist contracting certain diseases.
