Vaccinate the media with some sanity first because their anti-vaccine reporting is just horrendous

World’s largest vaccine inoculation drive started last Saturday in India, and with textbook accuracy, came out the liberal progressive media of the country having a significant scientific bend of mind and started its anti-vaccine reportage to disparage the entire endeavour and sow seeds of misinformation amongst the larger public. India had granted emergency authorization to Serum Institute of India’s Covishield and Bharat Biotech’s Covaxin earlier in January for restricted emergency use, under which the frontline health workers and other emergency workers are being given the vaccine jabs.

However, it was NDTV and its Harvard alumni journalists leading the charge of creating an environment of paranoia and psychosis when it dedicated a full section on its airtime to highlight the one or two odd cases that prop up whenever someone takes a vaccine. And even in one of the cases where the reporter talked to a patient, he accepted he had forgotten to take his blood pressure medicine in the morning, before taking the vaccine.

India Today carried a news report where it contradicted the essence of its news story by writing, “As many as 51 healthcare workers experienced minor adverse events.” Minor adverse events in itself is a paradoxical statement which a layman would have a hard time deciphering. How exactly does anybody have minor adverse effects?

Nobody is against the media reporting every single case of the discomfort of the vaccine amongst the patients but it is the clickbait and misleading headlines that are being dubbed as the ‘bone of contention’.

The Indian media was awfully quiet when news of the Pfizer vaccine and its apparent injection leading to the death of 23 patients in Norway came out. For all we know, the Pfizer vaccine might not have been entirely responsible for the deaths, but even then, there was no clamour around it compared to the few odd cases that have received a bucketful of reportage in India.

Reported by TFI previously, the news of a man dying, who was a part of the phase III trials of Bharat Biotech vaccine was also blown out of proportion when the autopsy report confirmed that he died of cardiorespiratory issues, not the COVID vaccine if he was even given one.

Read more: Died after the poisoning, not due to the vaccine shot: Man’s death being used by propagandists to discredit Indian vaccine

When the coronavirus cases started piling in India, the international media lobby tried its best to paint a dystopian picture where the country was set to be overburdened with hundreds of millions of cases. However, nothing sort of that happened and India presently has managed to flatten the curve, unlike other Western countries where the second or third wave is raging havoc.

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The health ministry on Saturday remarked that close to 200,000 people were vaccinated on Day 1 of the drive. And it is quite imperative that few of them would have developed certain problems, partly due to their underlying conditions and because vaccines tend to evoke some allergic reactions.

Read More: The Anil Vij case: An effort to discredit the Indian Covid vaccine is underway

The opportunistic opposition and its leaders like Akhilesh Yadav had already started spreading the misinformation regarding the vaccine when the news of Union government approving the vaccines came out. The media is only providing fodder to the likes of Akhilesh Yadav to further their propaganda, for such elements, the vaccine developed by scientists, who worked day and night to make it happen, is simply a BJP vaccine.

The media should introspect and try to formulate and abide by clear guidelines on how to report when a mass-vaccination drive is being carried out. People are prone to hysteria, rumour-mongering, and misinformation, and therefore, instead of gaining some quick clicks and TRP, media should act responsibly.