Well and good, but talk about long winded! What’s wrong with saying “selamat pagi/siang/sore/malam” (good morning/day/afternoon/evening)?

If we want to make it inclusive, we should keep it short and secular. Since our independence on Aug. 17, 1945, the national greeting was simply one word: “Merdeka!” (freedom), while in these COVID-19 days, it’s two words: Sudah divaksin? (Have you been vaccinated?)

Well, no, it isn’t really, but it might as well be, as everyone seems to be “greeting” each other by asking this question.

The problem is, being vaccinated is not as inclusive or as merdeka as it should be. At best, the vaccine rollout seems simply to be a stopgap measure to allay fears of COVID-19 infection or death.

Since December 2020, most countries are attempting to vaccinate their citizens to try to achieve herd immunity. Some governments are even considering making it mandatory despite the fact that the World Health Organization doesn’t recommend it. The Indonesian government’s target is to vaccinate 181.5 million people before the end of 2021. Wow, that is 66 percent of the total population of over 275 million people! Pretty ambitious! President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is certain the target will be met.

This target system reminds me of the family planning program in the New Order, whereby village women were herded to health clinics by the military, at the behest of the village and religious heads and forced to have intrauterine devices or implants inserted. Never mind that the women may be bleeding afterward, or have unpleasant side effects, the important thing was that the government target was met.

Of course, it’s not like that with the COVID-19 vaccine, but the social and practical pressure to be vaccinated is great. Recently, I saw an advertisement of Qatar Airlines announcing that they offered the first fully vaccinated flights, both crew and passengers. Sales pitch? Being vaccinated could also become the new passport to travel (besides your regular passport), to work and to access entertainment places and even basic services.

At a time when corporations are more powerful than governments, the latter doesn’t even have to make it officially mandatory for vaccines to effectively become so. You can opt not to go to bars or movie theatres that require you to be vaccinated, but what if it’s a job that you need to feed your family?

Then there is also the issue of vaccine passports, which is currently being discussed worldwide. If it does get implemented, it will also add to social stratification and can be used to mine data. If oil companies and multinational corporations like Unilever used to be the richest in the world, now it’s those who collect and own personal data like Facebook, Instagram, Tinder etc. Data has become the new “oil”. Could it also be a means to create a “surveillance state”?

There is also the wealth gap. Rich countries have purchased more COVID-19 vaccines than they need, while poor countries will have to wait, maybe for years. This follows a pattern of rich nations consuming more in general and having access to the latest technologies, advances in science and health. In the case of the coronavirus vaccines, who knows, this could prove to be a blessing in disguise, as maybe, in a few years’ time, the side effects of the vaccine will be better known. Most countries have their share of vaccine hesitant people or antivaxxers, while some like Tanzania have refused vaccinations altogether. They say they don’t want to be used as guinea pigs.

Have we not learned from the thalidomide tragedy from the post-war era, where children in the 1960s were born with the shortening or absence of limbs? If anything, Big Pharma has become even more powerful than ever. Governments have even granted vaccine suppliers indemnity from any claims from the use of the vaccines. If you still think that corporations don’t control governments, think again!

Some experts believe that the vaccines could immobilize our own natural immune system, which is broad spectrum, while the vaccine is narrow spectrum, designed for one type of virus only. So what happens when new virus mutations come on the scene and our immune system has been disabled and millions of people in the world have been vaccinated? Coronavirus apocalypse? But then, so is continued lockdown!

And don’t you think we should take into account that the global mega pharmaceutical companies that are producing the corona vaccines are also the ones that caused the opioid epidemic in the United States, which killed as many people that have died due to the coronavirus? Will these companies make a bumper profit from the coronavirus vaccines? Certainly in the short run.

Since the pandemic, there has been a global recession, but did you know that billionaires in America have gotten 54 percent richer? In one of his YouTube videos, the ribald but very sharply analytical comedian Russell Brand asked, has the pandemic been used as a mask for wealth and power transfer? Historically it’s been shown that times of crises often do make the rich richer and the poor poorer, no surprises there.

What about freedom of speech? Medical and vaccine experts who have voiced their criticism of the corona vaccine have systematically been muzzled by Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Sure, they say it’s to fight COVID-19 vaccine conspiracies, but is there not the danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater, i.e. discussion and valid criticism by experts, or simply people providing alternative solutions?

The vaccination program and the pandemic as a whole reveal many things about the state of affairs in the world, e.g. politicization of fear, using the crisis to establish Big Brother measures, the distribution of resources and wealth, the curbing of civil liberties, the commoditization of health and a reactive approach to the problem.

The coronavirus pandemic and its attendant “solutions”, besides being dealt with epidemiologically, should also be studied holistically as a global disaster whose underlying causes should be studied with the aim to derive global principles. Instead it’s done in this piecemeal, politicized, commoditized way, which simply serves to worsen existing disparities, just as the interfaith greetings only serve to emphasize religious divisions in Indonesia.

Let’s hope we can soon cry “Merdeka!” again – to both the coronavirus pandemic as well as the oppression and planetary suicide of the existing world order, which has been considered “normal”. After all, who wants to have a “new normal” that is worse than the “old normal”?

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The writer is the author of Sex, Power and Nation.