“Vaccination: breaking through the wall of propaganda”
A collective of Brussels resisters recently launched a “low-tech” information campaign to enable people to make an informed choice when faced with the possibility of being vaccinated against covid. Informed consent is enshrined in Belgian law [1], but on the ground, the media, political and medical campaigns that marked the covid crisis have flouted it.
“We wanted to inform people about the vaccines, remain neutral and ask questions. We have already had two very alarmist years, of fear and exaggeration. Here, the idea was to break through the wall of propaganda and reach the citizen”. This small group of Brussels residents, keen to share “another side of the story” about the (worldwide) covid vaccination campaign, recently launched a first initiative along these lines. How? With a website [2] - imitating the official site Jemevaccine.be - and above all two flyers, all headed with the question “Should I get vaccinated?”. “We realised that on the Internet you always stay in the same circle, and you end up preaching to the converted... We wanted to reach the general public. But everything is filtered in the traditional media. In the end, letterboxes are still the simplest means”.
By and for the vaccinated and the unvaccinated
Among the authors of this citizens’ initiative are vaccinated people who have questions: “It’s not a question of vaxxers against non-vaxxers, it’s a resistance movement that wants to bring the two together and refuses to fall into the trap of totalitarian excesses”.
In early 2022, while the political authorities, relayed by the media, were urging citizens to get their third dose (the famous “booster”), 200,000 flyers were thus printed with the group’s own funds, for Brussels households. Some fifty people volunteered to distribute them in letterboxes.
Feedback
As for the reactions, “some called us selfish, bastards, antivaxxers, and others said exactly the opposite... it also allowed us to have some lovely encounters, like in that park where I got on well with a woman. She told me, I’ve got something to show you, you have to read this! She took our flyer out of her pocket. The next day, I brought her 1,500 of them, which she distributed herself”, says one of the instigators. “A mole even infiltrated the team”, adds another.
The role of the media
“I find it absurd and sad that we have to do this, to get people to think about whether the vaccine is justified, and that the real debate is totally absent from themainstream media. There is no questioning whatsoever in the major media such as RTBF, which by the way wrote a long article about us [3]… it’s the same abroad. A few days ago, the BBC compared antivaxxers to people who believe the Earth is flat”, laments one of the members of the collective.
As under the occupation
And he concludes, dismayed: “This kind of initiative is as if we were under the occupation. There is no other way to tell the truth; we are forced to go through this to get the debate heard”. AVIQ, the Walloon health agency, decided moreover to file a complaint [4] against the site’s authors. “But they never did. It was mainly intimidation on their part. We have not committed any infringement with regard to copyright or to what was said”.
By Thérèse Leblanc, journalist at BAM!
[1] Article 8 §1 of the Law of 22 August 2002 on patients’ rights https://wallex.wallonie.be/eli/loi-decret/2002/08/22/2002022737/2002/10/06?doc=8558
[2] https://estcequejemevaccine.eu/
[3] https://www.rtbf.be/article/estcequejemevaccineeu-un-site-imitant-la-plateforme-officielle-wallonne-diffuse-de-la-desinformation-10936511
[4] https://www.rtbf.be/article/vaccination-covid-l-aviq-porte-plainte-contre-un-site-qui-imite-l-officiel-pour-repandre-de-la-desinformation-10938109
Photo source:
Montage based on a BAM! screenshot of the site estcequejemevaccine.eu
