Chatham-Kent’s Medical Officer of Health is at a loss to explain why some people are hesitant to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
Others that are a thorn in the side of Dr. David Colby are people who ignore quarantine orders to help prevent the spread of the virus.
“I don’t tolerate people who don’t isolate when they’re instructed to isolate and I hit them with a Section 22 order very rapidly, which involves a $5000 a day fine if they are caught violating their isolation precautions. That settles people down very, very quickly.”
He says as far as the vaccines go there is about 3 per cent of the population considered anti-vaxxers but he says science is not on their side, so they have no credibility.
“I always say people are entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts,” Dr. Colby says. “If you want to dream up fables and base your life on them, I guess you can if you want to, but my job is to get vaccine into the arm of those that want vaccine, and convince the vaccine hesitant that have been misinformed by some of these sentiments that are out there, that it’s a great idea not only for their safety but for everybody’s safety.”
Dr. Colby says public health and other industry experts have tried a variety of messaging to try to ensure people vaccines are safe and effective, but there will always be a portion of the population that remains skeptical.
In the meantime, Chatham-Kent Public Health and its partners continue to work on getting priority groups vaccinated, with almost 19,000 doses administered in the municipality so far.