United States president-elect Joe Biden, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia and, of course, our very own President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo played this game recently. All the leaders got their respective countries’ first COVID-19 jab to inspire confidence in the rest of the population to get vaccinated. 

In the United Kingdom, that honor was given to Margaret Keenan, a 91-year-old grandma. Maybe this is because they are vaccinating the over-80s first there. And I thought respecting elders was a tradition of Eastern cultures.

In Indonesia those getting prioritized are medical workers, the military, the police, state officials, other public service workers and then the general public between the ages of 18 and 59. Only then will those over 60 get their turn.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a very clear statement that getting vaccinated was “good for you and good for the whole country". For once, most leaders in the world are in unison in voicing the same message: that it’s a patriotic act to get vaccinated. You protect yourself as well as others. What’s not to like?

Err, plenty. There have always been antivaxxers who want to call their own shots, they say. They refuse to have themselves or their children vaccinated because of multiple factors, including religion, ideology and politics.

For example, QAnon – the far right movement whose hero is Donald Trump – are antivaxxers. Some of the conspiracy theories are driven by scientists and doctors and former employees of pharmaceutical companies who have helped develop the vaccine.

Hmm, given the greed of big pharma, which fueled the opioid crisis in the US, maybe these doctors and scientists know a thing or two and the QAnon movement is just using their findings to fuel political unrest.

The lack of clarity about the safety of the vaccine was also the reason Ribka Tjiptaning, a lawmaker and a medical doctor, in an official parliamentary session, vociferously stated her refusal to be vaccinated. She cited examples of vaccines for polio in Sukabumi that caused paralysis, and vaccines for elephantiasis that resulted in 12 dead in Majalaya (both are towns in West Java). She claimed that these vaccines had been rejected by India and Africa but had been accepted by Indonesia. In short, she said it was her human right to refuse to be vaccinated. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) does say that COVID-19 vaccination should not be mandatory.

After her outburst, she said she was reprimanded by her party, the Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which is also the party behind Jokowi. The plot thickens!

In Indonesia, if you’re against the vaccine, it seems to mean you’re also against Jokowi. Is it for this reason that, recently, University of Indonesia (UI) alumni have been posting photos of themselves with the statement “I am a UI alumnus. I am ready to be vaccinated” to show their support for the government’s vaccination program?

Given that some of the alumni are not even eligible to be vaccinated, is this more a manifestation of the practice of the orchestration of online public opinion, which has become increasingly common in the Jokowi administration?

The WHO identified antivaxxers as being one of the top 10 global health threats in 2019, but obviously they are not saying this for political reasons. Nevertheless, even the WHO has not been immune to being politicized and caught between Trump and China. Oh dear!

It is certainly true that vaccines have played important roles in preventing a plethora of diseases, including measles, mumps, tetanus, diphtheria, hepatitis A and B, rubella, the common flu and many others. The vaccines take years – sometimes as many as 10 – to be made ready for widespread public use.

So as scientists around the world have developed potential vaccines against COVID-19 and have claimed that some of them are ready for use after a year, vaccine hesitancy is understandable. Top reasons people give are potential side effects and the efficacy of the vaccine, not to mention the fact that the virus mutates!

But given that the COVID-19 pandemic has not only upended our day-to-day lives but also devastated economies and lives, it’s not surprising that everyone wants a quick fix, not least governments. This gives rise to “vaccine nationalism” whereby countries push to get first access, making deals with the pharmaceutical companies developing the vaccines.

Obviously, rich countries have better means to do this. WHO director general Tedros A. Ghebreyesus warned that vaccine nationalism could put the world on the brink of a “catastrophic moral failure” and urged countries and manufacturers to distribute the vaccine fairly around the world.

The Indonesian government has an ambitious vaccination plan, which started on Jan 13. President Jokowi hopes to achieve herd immunity in 15 months (see “Long road to herd immunity”, The Jakarta Post, Jan. 15).

Dream on Pak!  Dicky Budiman, a global health researcher at Griffith University, said at least three or four years would be necessary.

Well, Pak Jokowi, if you had responded more swiftly to the pandemic, not prioritized the economy, been stricter about closing borders, etc., maybe you could have saved more lives.  You could have also bought yourself more time for the implementation of the vaccination program, rather than rushing it now and being pressured to make it free for 180 million Indonesians (to make up for your government’s previous pandemic blunders).

Trump lost the election mainly because he bungled the US government’s response to the pandemic. Pak Jokowi, this is your last term, so you have nothing to lose in that respect. But you do have another three years in power. You lost your chance to do a Jacinda Ardern when the pandemic hit the nation. Your national vaccination program is your second “to be or not to be” chance to carry out the remainder of your presidency.

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The writer is the author of Julia’s Jihad.