Literatus: On the segregation policy for unvaccinated Filipinos

AFTER checking the Department of Health website and government advisories on Covid-19 vaccination, it has been a cause of frustration to learn that all that can be found is a unified narrative that the Emergency Use vaccines have the infection under control.

This confusion, if not ignorance, has led a few officials to adopt a segregation policy for unvaccinated Filipinos. Therefore, some specific and publicly unasked questions must be specifically answered to help Filipinos understand the truth and the fact of what they are on this issue.

Here are some straight answers to Covid-19 vaccination questions:

Q: Are vaccinated individuals no longer susceptible to Covid-19?

A: The answer is no. They are still vulnerable to be reinfected with the original virus or with a different variant. This is a strange characteristic of the Emergency Use Covid-19 vaccines. If vaccines for polio and smallpox protect the vaccinated from getting infected, these Covid-19 vaccines do not.

Q. Are vaccinated individuals no longer infectious if infected?

A: The answer is no. They are still infectious. Theoretically, infection from vaccinated individuals can be more dangerous because if despite their heightened immune response they are still infectious to others, then the infecting Sars-CoV-2 may have mutated to survive and infect others. Perhaps, this can explain the emergence of the new variants (no one so far has explained why these variants are appearing). However, no empirical study on this problem has been done yet. If there are, it has not been released to the public yet. Therefore, attention to medical researchers—these are two interesting research problems to take on. This means that unvaccinated individuals may be safer to stay away from infected vaccinated people they know if they want to remove their masks. (Take note: There is still confusion on how effective masks are against Covid-19 infection and which masks are.)

Q. Are unvaccinated individuals more dangerous than the vaccinated ones?

A: The answer is no. Most politicians are grossly wrong, particularly those who support a segregation policy. If the common government narrative is that vaccination reduces death and hospitalization, then vaccinated Filipinos have nothing to fear from those who are unvaccinated. Therefore, a segregation policy means that either the government narrative is wrong, or the politicians do not believe it. However, theoretically, as indicated above, the unvaccinated have more reasons to fear the vaccinated because they could be a source of highly virulent Covid-19 variants.

If you have more questions but received no answers, send me a message. If you have access to studies that help clarify the questions or the answers provided in this column, send me a copy of the full study, preferably peer reviewed.