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“I’m not going to get a vaccine and that’s it. Is my life at risk? The problem is mine,” said President Jair Bolsonaro (without a party) last Tuesday (15).
Such a position is increasingly common among Brazilians, according to the Datafolha institute.
A survey conducted in early December shows that 22% say they will not get vaccinated. In August, it was 9%. In both surveys, most said they plan to get vaccinated, but the percentage dropped from 89% to 73%.
If vaccination against covid-19 is not really mandatory, as Bolsonaro argues, an issue that the Federal Supreme Court is judging at this time, immunization will be, in fact, an individual decision.
But the refusal of the president and other citizens to do so is a selfish stance, putting other people’s health at risk and seriously undermining efforts to end the pandemic, say experts heard by BBC News Brazil.
“Those who say that they will not be vaccinated because it is an individual decision, they say so out of ignorance. Vaccination is not and has never been an individual concern,” says infectologist Raquel Stucchi, from Unicamp (State University of Campinas).
Why Your Vaccine Protects Others
The doctor explains that the goal of a vaccine is to provide protection against a virus or bacteria to a sufficient portion of the population to prevent this threat from continuing to spread.
The higher the number of people vaccinated, the easier it is to control the spread of a disease. But if few people get vaccinated, it is more easily spread.
“This is different from cancer, for example. If I don’t treat myself, I will only harm myself, because I will die sooner. But the decision to vaccinate has an impact on public health,” says Stucchi.
The percentage of people who must be vaccinated to achieve so-called herd or group immunity, that is, to block the spread of a virus or bacteria and prevent epidemics, varies.
This depends on the ease with which the pathogen is transmitted from one person to another and also on the effectiveness of the vaccine, that is, the proportion of people who are protected by being immunized.
In the case of measles, a highly infectious disease, this rate should be 95%, explains infectologist Alberto Chebabo, vice president of the Brazilian Society of Infectious Diseases and medical director of the Clementino Fraga Filho University Hospital in Rio de Janeiro.
For covid-19, this index is not yet known, because it remains to be seen if the effectiveness of the studies will be confirmed by mass vaccination and how long the immunity conferred in this way lasts.
But it is estimated that it will be necessary to vaccinate between 70% and 80% of the population to reduce the circulation of the coronavirus and end the pandemic.
“You have to remember that there will always be a part of the population that cannot be vaccinated, such as pregnant women, for whom it is not recommended today, who have severe allergies and other contraindications,” says Chebabo.
Even for those who cannot be vaccinated, mass immunization will be essential to prevent these people from becoming infected. The same goes for those who do not have an ideal response to the vaccine.
“A position like that of the president is a selfish attitude, of someone who only thinks of himself and not of protecting those around him,” says the infectologist.
Chebabo also says that getting vaccinated will be important even for people who have already had covid-19, like Bolsonaro, because there are more and more confirmed cases of people who were infected more than once, some even worse than before.
Scientists are still not sure how long the immunity acquired from having the disease lasts. Therefore, a part of these people, or even all, may still be vulnerable to the coronavirus.
“The recommendation is that everyone get vaccinated,” says Chebabo.
The pandemic will only end with mass vaccination
Furthermore, our experience with the covid-19 pandemic so far shows that it is unlikely to be controlled naturally or only with measures of isolation or social detachment.
Epidemiologist Antonio Augusto Moura da Silva, professor at the Department of Public Health at UFMA (Federal University of Maranhão), points to the example of Manaus.
A study published in the journal Science estimates that, in October, 76% of the population of the capital of Amazonas had already been infected by the new coronavirus.
However, the average number of new cases per day remains high and the city’s hospitals have filled up again in recent weeks.
“Even with such a high rate of infected people, the disease continues to spread and without a vaccine the rate anywhere tends to increase to 80% or 90%, unless there is a mass immunization to block this sooner. “says Silva.
The epidemiologist points out that the scientific data on vaccines that have been published so far show that they have very good efficacy and safety.
For Silva, they are the “best hope” we have to achieve herd immunity, because studies show that some of the vaccines against covid-19 produce more antibodies and more effective antibodies than those that are generated when someone falls naturally ill.
Raquel Stucchi agrees that immunization will be essential to end the pandemic.
“Other measures have an important impact, but the knowledge that we have acquired in the last year shows that there is no other strategy than vaccination that can do this,” says the infectologist.
