Opinion – Marcia Castro: In 2022, more empathy and respect for life

Twenty-two months have passed since the first death confirmed by Covid-19 in Brazil. During this period, the federal government was the protagonist of a horror show marked by misgovernance, denial, attack on democracy, disrespect for life and the spread of disinformation.

Covid’s Parliamentary Inquiry Commission (CPI) exposed these and other crimes in its report approved in October. The punishment of the indicted depends on the Attorney General’s Office and proceeds slowly. Meanwhile, the horror show continues.

The latest barbarity concerns the vaccination against Covid-19 in children 5 to 11 years old. The vaccine in question is Comirnaty, developed by Pfizer-BioNTech, with safety and efficacy demonstrated in clinical trials, and already approved for use in the United States, Canada, the European Union and the United Kingdom, among others.

More than 6 million children have been vaccinated in the United States. In Brazil, the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa) approved, on December 16, the indication of Comirnaty for use in children aged 5 to 11 years and, on the following day, the Technical Advisory Board on Immunization of Covid-19 ( CTAI Covid-19) was in favor of incorporating the vaccine — CTAI Covid-19 was created by the Ministry of Health in August 2021 to assess technical and scientific aspects in the adoption of measures to combat Covid-19.

The expectation after these opinions would be for the Ministry of Health to approve the vaccination, as was done with Coronavac, AstraZeneca, Janssen and Pfizer. However, what was seen was the president’s unfounded questioning about the safety of the vaccine, followed by intimidation of Anvisa employees. The health minister, in full agreement with the president, postponed the decision, arguing that there was no rush for approval, since child deaths by Covid-19 would be “within a level that does not imply emergency decisions”.

A week after the opinion of Anvisa, the minister indicated that the vaccination of children would not be compulsory and would be linked to the presentation of a medical prescription. The final decision, however, will only be made on January 5, 2022. Before, a public consultation was opened.

None of this makes sense!

First, from the beginning of the pandemic to the end of November 2021, there were more than 6,100 cases of Covid-19 among children aged 5 to 11 years, 23% of these had Covid-19-associated Pediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome and 301 died. Covid-19 kills more children than any other vaccine-preventable disease in Brazil. This is an unacceptable level, as any avoidable death is unacceptable!

Second, why public consultation for vaccine and not chloroquine? This is another deliberate strategy of giving space to denial, creating a false impression that there is disagreement about the safety of the vaccine, confusing the population, generating distrust in science and, above all, it is a perpetuation of the crimes identified by Covid’s CPI .

Third, requiring a prescription is ignoring regional inequalities in access to services and therefore deliberately making it difficult for the most vulnerable children to be vaccinated. State health secretaries, recognizing the total absurdity of the ministry’s recommendation, have already indicated that vaccination will be compulsory.

During the pandemic children became ill, died, were orphaned, and could not go to school. A government that really cared about life would be in a hurry to change this scenario through vaccination.

In 2022, more empathy! And may the population participate in the nation’s most important public consultation, the October elections, and choose a leadership that respects truth, democracy and life.