On Sunday (December 5) morning, Supreme court advocate Prashant Bhushan again resorted to peddling misinformation on social media to create a fresh wave of vaccine hesitancy in India.
In a tweet, Bhushan wrote, “They’re telling the unjabbed to take the jab because the jab works. And telling the jabbed to get a booster because the jab doesn’t work. All while telling everyone that the unjabbed are putting the jabbed in danger by not getting a jab that didn’t protect the jabbed.”
It is true that the Government of India has been on a mission mode to get unvaccinated individuals, immunised against the Wuhan Coronavirus. Therefore, an appeal has been made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the people of India in this regard. However, neither the Indian government nor the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has made any official statement regarding the need for booster shots for either Covaxin (developed by Oxford AstraZeneca) or Covishield (developed by Bharat Biotech). No statement, denying the efficacy of vaccines (even after 2 doses) in fighting Coronavirus, has been made.
Booster doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been given in other countries, but it has not started yet in India, although Serum Institute has applied for DCGI’s approval to use Covishield as booster dose.
While there is no iota of truth in any of the claims made by Prashant Bhushan, the Supreme Court advocate went on to claim that the government was telling the ‘unjabbed’ that they were endangering the lives of people. It is a known fact that vaccines are not 100% effective. However, they are more immune to the virus than an unvaccinated individual, relying solely on natural immunity. By resorting to rhetorical statements, Prashant Bhushan insinuated that one did not need to get vaccinated against Covid-19. As of December 5, 2021, about 1.27 crore Covid-19 doses has been administered.
Prashant Bhushan is also wrong in saying that the vaccines don’t work, just because vaccinated people also get infected. Since the beginning of Covid-19 vaccines were introduced, it has been known that the vaccines don’t prevent the Coronavirus infection, but they reduce the complications of the infection. Data from all countries have shown that rate of mortality and serious injury is far less among vaccinated people who get infected. Therefore, it is wong to say that the jab does not work, that is a lie.
Prashant Bhushan and his consistent anti-vaccine propaganda
In February this year, Prashant Bhushan had advocated that financial resources allocated towards Covid-19 vaccines in Union Budget 2021 ought to be relocated to migrant workers and farmers. In his defence, he had claimed that Covid-19 was “naturally dying down” in the country. The controversial activist had said, “FM announces 35,000 Cr of our money to be spent on Pvt Vaccine Companies for untested Vaccines at a time when Covid is naturally dying down in India! But this money cannot be given to poor migrant labour who lost their jobs or to Farmers for MSP on their crops. Wah FM sahiba!”
Two months later, India witnessed the deadly second wave of Wuhan Coronavirus. In June 2021, he tweeted a report by a website, which suggested that the mortality rate was higher in vaccinated people as compared to the unvaccinated ones. Citing health data from the UK, the report claimed that the death rate from the Delta variant of COVID virus was six times higher for vaccinated than unvaccinated people. The report also included the link to the original data, and the data showed that the report used a misleading headline.
The health data only gave the number of deaths among vaccinated and non-vaccinated people, it did not include other factors like age group, co-morbidities etc. Bhushan had also claimed younger population have a higher chance of dying through vaccination as compared to suffering severe complications or even death due to coronavirus. His anti-vaccine bile came after Twitter had removed Prashant Bhushan’s anti-mask tweets for spreading misinformation.