Yesterday, the Ministry of Health made the news again when they announced that they’d made a police report against Healing the Divide, a group of unvaccinated people who are notoriously vocal in their belief that vaccination is bad. The MOH report claims that Healing the Divide found Iris Koh was trying to instigate the group to flood pediatric vaccination centers just to ask questions.
Was it true?
Here’s the original post from the Healing the Divide Telegram group.
There’s nothing overtly wrong in it. Seems rather innocent in fact. Netizens however argue that it’s what was left unspoken that’s the incriminating part.
In that sense, the Netizens are right on the money. There are already limited slots for pediatric vaccinations, due to the limited number of vaccination centers for kids. To purposely take up a booking slot and then use it simply to ask questions is what gets Netizens riled up.
The questions that the group want to ask are all templated and designed to waste as much time as possible.
Those are not the types of questions that anybody can answer off-hand, not even medical professionals. Some of them are even purposefully combative, such as the one asking for links. Which medical professional would have them on-hand at a vaccination site?
That’s why Netizens think that Iris Koh and her group should be punished.
These Netizens think that the group’s done more than enough damage already, especially considering they were just in the news recently trying to sue SPH.
Judging from their comments in the Telegram channel, they’re trying something similar as well, with them already making a police report against the MOH.
In the echo chamber of their Telegram group, there’s nothing but affirmation from the members.
Not surprising in the least.
Either way, Netizens’ perception of the group has soared into the negative with the latest fiasco.
Anti-vaxxers already have a negative reputation in the eyes of the vaccinated so it doesn’t really take much to tip the needle of public perception further into the red.
Despite all this though, those against the vaccine still show up to support their views. They’re adamant that the group did nothing wrong.
Some of them even claim that the MOH is the one that’s in the wrong in this case.
The group views that they did nothing that’d warrant them being reported to the police.
While some of the commenters really believe what they’re saying, there are a definite few who post just to troll and stir shit up.
Here are a couple of the typical ones; a foreigner (an American who has no say in Singapore) , a conspiracy theorist and somebody who’s too pathetic to show their face online.
These fools have nothing better to do than to try to stoke an already volatile situation. Not that anybody needs any help to rage against the other side.
Of course, it doesn’t take a genius to see that proponents of both sides will butt heads because of this.
Comments on all the posts talking about this have both groups tearing into each other over what’s the right thing to do in this case.
For her part, Iris Koh’s posted a blog post on the Healing the Divide website that has her denying all the allegations.
It’s not going to change those who’ve made up their minds though, because they’re already decrying the group as terrorists or worse.
I’m not sure whether that’s justified or not, but it does seem like the group has been escalating their efforts and gained a lot of notoriety in doing so.
Terrorist or not, it still doesn’t change the fact that some of the people against vaccines are batshit crazy.
Does that sound like somebody you’d trust?