Refusing a vaccine does not make you a deserter

I write in response to the article in last week’s Sunday Mail by George Koumoullis, entitled “Accepting a mandatory lockdown but not a vaccine makes no sense”.

How a non-medical person, who has no first-hand experience of what is happening on Covid wards, or what doctors and nurses are enduring on a daily basis, can label them “deserters”, displays a level of arrogance and disrespect that beggars belief.

Governments are right to liken this pandemic to a war. As in any situation where life appears to be threatened, there is mass hysteria among the people, which leads to the desired effect of obedience and acquiescence, with subsequent loss of human and civil liberties.

However, we do still have some human rights, so those who choose not to have the vaccine should not be treated as outcasts.

The mere fact that it is the healthcare professionals, those on the frontline, that are the ‘deserters’, rejecting the vaccine, should surely make us wake up and listen.

That aside, the doctors and nurses who risk their lives day after day on Covid wards, undertaking tasks that I’m sure Mr Koumoullis cannot even imagine, should be hailed as ‘war heros’, not deserters.

In the real world, taking part in clinical trials is a personal choice. Covid vaccines are still in the trial phase, and will not be complete until January 2023, in the case of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Those who wish to be part of it, good on you. But those who wish to decline, or just wait a while, should be allowed to do so without being judged.

Despina Christoforou