Letters | Hong Kong needs straight truth, not fear, on Covid-19 vaccines

Readers react to the city’s efforts to fight the virus, discussing the media’s role in explaining how vaccination reduces mortality, the government’s challenge of getting it right on pandemic policies, and the dubious use of plastic dividers to prevent infection

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Residents queue for BioNTech jabs at Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park Sports Centre in Sai Ying Pun on August 14. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Published: 7:00am, 28 Aug 2021

After reading the article, “Hong Kong tightens entry rules for arrivals from 16 countries battling Covid-19 resurgence” (August 16), I found myself speechless in the face of this U-turn and such tight restrictions, not to mention the harsh words used such as “Covid-19 resurgence”.

Behind my dismay lies frustration at how the media, including this newspaper, portray the vaccination programme. They continuously emphasise the risk of contracting Covid-19 even when vaccinated, as in the case of the helper who returned from the United States, but keeps failing to report that actually vaccines do work all over the world.

The media have also failed to carefully explain that vaccination is useful mostly to reduce mortality and to reduce severe symptoms of Covid-19, hence bringing little real threat to people, especially the elderly. It may not protect against contracting the disease but does protect against the severe symptoms.

Without mentioning Europe, let’s take Singapore, a nearby country with a high vaccination rate, as an example. Your newspaper didn’t report that in cases occurring in the last 28 days, deaths occurred almost entirely among the completely unvaccinated, while only 0.2 per cent of vaccinated people ever required to be admitted to an intensive care unit and 1.2 per cent required oxygen supplementation.

We can therefore safely say that full vaccination does greatly protect against severe symptoms, which is exactly the reason we should get vaccinated.

While the Hong Kong government’s pursuit of a zero-Covid-19 approach is understandable, it’s rather disturbing to see how the media keep failing to encourage vaccinations by keeping such positive data hidden and by tacitly defending the implementation of harsh measures, a severe financial and mental punishment given expensive hotels and up to 21 days of confinement.