Death and devastation surround Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). In the past few weeks, 38 AMU teachers, including 17 serving ones, have died of Covid or Covid-like symptoms. This is apart from the non-teaching staff of the university. Misery abounds the campus, and many even initially believed that a new strain of the novel Coronavirus was behind the unprecedented surge of infections and deaths in and around AMU. However, it has now been found that it is not a new Covid strain which is in circulation in AMU, rather, a bunch of lies and rumours is what is leading to the deaths of university staff.
It was our hunch from quite some time that what inflicts AMU is not a new Covid strain or some miraculous inefficiency on the part of the university staff to fight Covid-19. Rather, it is an inherent sense of vaccine hesitancy and fearmongering which is doing the deed when it comes to AMU staff succumbing to the disease. Not just any staff, even educated and reputed professors are succumbing to Covid-19 because they chose to believe in a barrage of rumours and not get vaccinated. TFI reports on the destruction caused by Coronavirus at AMU can be read here and here.
Now, according to a DNA report, it has come to light that a rumour is circulating among the staff of AMU that people are dying due to the vaccines. It is being said that the second wave of the pandemic occurred due to mass vaccinations. It is for this reason that even educated professors are afraid of getting vaccinated. For this very reason, may not just in AMU, but across Aligarh have refused to get vaccinated.
DNA reported that there are primarily three rumours circulating at AMU. These are:
People die a few days after getting vaccinated;
Vaccines leads to infertility and impotency and
People get infected after getting vaccinated.
Such is the impact of these unscientific rumours that the number of vaccination centres at Aligarh have been reduced, owing to low turnout and a general lack of enthusiasm among the public to get vaccinated against Coronavirus.
According to a report by India Today, despite regular appeals for vaccination by the Vice-Chancellor urging the faculty members to take the jab, the vaccination drive received a lukewarm response at AMU. One Professor Waseem confirmed that among the fatalities there was hardly anyone who had received a jab of the Covid-19 vaccine.
What was so far a doubt has now been proven right. The destruction caused at AMU is primarily due to the aversion of staff and even educated professors to get vaccinated. At a time when vaccination against Coronavirus has become a national duty for each Indian, that educated staff members of an institute like AMU are falling for rumours is nothing short of shameful.
