Let’s take a break from politics this week and turn our attention to something even more depressing: Covid-19. As cases continue to rise it is no longer possible to treat the virus as a thing of the past.
And as Covid makes a minor comeback so do the misconceptions and rumours that characterised the dark days of the pandemic.
Here’s one that I find people discussing more and more—can the Covid vaccine kill you?
Don’t sneer. It is a serious question. Because this view is spreading fast by word of mouth. And it matters more now than it did say, two months ago because of the rising number of cases.
The people who tell you not to take the vaccine or insist that it killed their friends are not the usual nutcases. They are not like the anti-vaxxers in America or the relatively few loonies we have in India who have refused to take their Covid shots. They are otherwise perfectly reasonable people and they frame their doubts about the vaccine in terms that do not necessarily sound absurd.
Why is it, they ask, that so many young, mostly healthy people are suddenly dying of heart attacks? This question always touches something inside most of us because we all know somebody who seemed outwardly healthy till he (and it’s nearly always a ‘he’) suddenly collapsed and died from a heart attack.
So far, so sort-of-reasonable. The apparent increase in heart attacks is worrying. But then the argument gets weird. How could all of those young (well, youngish) people have died before their time unless they all had taken something that caused their hearts to stop? And what was it that they all had in common?
They had been vaccinated. Ergo: the Covid vaccine killed them. Isn’t that obvious?
Well, actually no, it isn’t. Because nearly all of these people also had something else in common: they had all been infected by Covid.
Isn’t it more likely that one of the long to medium-term effects of Covid is that it weakens the heart in ways we do not fully understand yet? And that people who have had Covid (i.e. nearly all of us) need to be more careful about our hearts?
This is the line that Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya has taken in recent interviews. “We saw so many young artists, athletes, sportspersons…They died on stage while performing. We all saw that and reports started coming in from various places,” he told NDTV.
Mandaviya then took the next logical step. “The government has commissioned research to find the link between the recent spates of heart attacks in young people with Covid,” he said, “and the results are expected in two-three months.”
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Bogus cures
When the most reasonable explanation for the spate of heart attacks is staring at us and is already the subject of research, why do so many people seek to blame the vaccine?
I guess it’s because we can do something about it. If having had Covid makes us more vulnerable to heart attacks, well then, that’s it. We have (nearly) all had Covid. There’s nothing we can do to change things. But if we blame vaccines, then maybe we can save ourselves by not having the third booster shot we should have taken by now. We can feel in control and believe that by refusing to take the vaccine we are doing something to protect ourselves.
It’s crazy, I know. But Covid brings out the craziness in all of us. The pandemic was such a traumatic period, full of death and desolation that most of us have blacked out the Covid phase. We forget how much panic and misinformation there was. Bogus ‘cures’ and ‘preventive’ medications were recommended by people who should have known better.
In the US, then President Donald Trump caused panic-buying of anti-malaria drugs like hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine by promoting them as a preventative measure. Both drugs were ineffective against Covid and this was demonstrated when Trump, his wife and their son all got Covid despite taking them.
Even doctors who should have been more responsible said that Ivermectin, a medicine used to treat parasitic infections, was an effective treatment. It was not. And there is still no scientific evidence that it is any kind of Covid cure, only the word of cranks and politically motivated anti-vaxxers.
Also Read: Spurt in 3rd dose uptake after China Covid surge prompts Modi govt to review India’s readiness
Don’t let hysteria prevail
While all this nonsense was being spread, the one effective medication that could fight Covid was being denied to patients. In the US, reactionary politicians ran campaigns against the vaccine. And in India, the ineptitude of the government’s anti-Covid team led to not enough vaccines being made available.
We brag now about the success of our vaccine campaign but we forget that it only succeeded after the Health Minister was sacked and the government sidelined the Dr. Death-type ‘task force’ figures who used to appear on TV every day to tell us that it was all our own fault for not masking up.
Barkha Dutt’s award-winning To Hell and Back: Humans of COVID has the full story. The government placed its first order for vaccines with the Serum Institute on 10 January 2021 for 1.1 crore shots. This was far too little. It was not enough to provide the first shot for even the adult population of Delhi. The second order with Serum Institute was also for just one crore doses.
The Serum Institute was making the British AstraZeneca vaccine (called Covishield in India) and could have supplied more shots but the government did not order them. As for the indigenous Covaxin vaccine, it took time to reach the production levels that politicians had claimed it would.
As a consequence, vaccines ran out. Central authorities lied and blamed the states for poor distribution. The states fought back and a free-for-all ensued till the government’s Covid team was reshuffled and the vaccination program finally got underway properly.
It is impossible to tell how many lives could have been saved if more people had been vaccinated earlier. But what is clear is that reason we are less worried about a resurgence of Covid today even as case numbers rise is that most of us are vaccinated.
So don’t be misled by claims that the vaccine will kill you. Take your booster if you haven’t already done so. We have been through this kind of hysteria once before. And people died because of it. Remember that there is no scientific evidence that either Covishield or Covaxin causes heart attacks.
Don’t let the hysteria take over again. And don’t let a new Covid wave spread only because of our ignorance.
Our lives may depend on it.
Vir Sanghvi is a print and television journalist, and talk show host. He tweets @virsanghvi
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)