The official government Facebook page of the United Kingdom was overwhelmed with comments opposing its message to get vaccinated against COVID.
On Tuesday, the U.K. government warned, "Unvaccinated people who get COVID-19 are 8 times more likely to be hospitalized than those who have had both doses of the vaccine and a booster."
"Don't delay - get vaccinated & get boosted," the Facebook post read, accompanied with a link to the NHS website where citizens can book a vaccination appointment.
But many took to the comments section to report adverse effects of the COVID vaccine or express opposition to the COVID jab in general, NOQ Report revealed. There has been over 12,000 comments since the post was published on Tuesday.
"In our experience friends and family that are vaccinated have actually been worse off and much more sever[e] and it lasting longer and needing more medical intervention," Simms K. Amalia commented, earning over 2,000 reactions with the comment. "I will not be forced to have something in my body that would actually hinder me. Natural immunity is the best."
"I've had covid twice, unvaccinated and had nothing but a cold," Lauren Ariel Russel wrote, earning over 1,200 reactions. "My mum is fully vaccinated and felt extremely unwell for weeks...Glad I never got vaccinated."
Adam Ringham simply commented to the U.K. gov't, "No one believes you," earning more than 1,400 reactions.
Interestingly, even those who have been vaccinated are now refusing booster shots.
Kristian Lewis commented, "I'm double jabbed. Still got covid quite bad. I refuse to get the booster, I'm not gonna keep getting jabbed again and again when more come out because it's obvious more will, when it's obviously part of the norm now."
The post in question can be seen below. Readers are urged to check the comments section:
According to new research coming from the Universities of Birmingham and Leeds, COVID vaccine hesitancy in the U.K. is linked to the lack of trust in public sector officials, especially in the group termed "high risk." The study showed that during the period before U.K.'s COVID vaccine rollout in December 2020, more than 11% of British adults said they were unwilling to get vaccinated against COVID.
Research showed that COVID vaccine hesitancy was lowest among white people, with 9% saying they did not want to get vaccinated against COVID. This is in comparison to 50% of Black people and other non-white groups, specifically 28% of South Asian and 17% of other Asian respondents who said they dit not want to receive the COVID vaccine.
Leeds University Business School's Senior Lecturer in Economics and lead author of the study Dr. Kausik Chaudhuri explained that the hesitancy surrounding the COVID vaccines is "at least partly driven by people feeling disenfranchised by the state or not trusting government personnel." Researchers found that as per data from the U.K. Household Longitudinal Study, participants who agreed with the statement "public officials don't care" or who thought that they "don't have a say in what government does" were also least likely to get the COVID vaccination.
It's also worth noting that the U.K. Health Security Agency recently released official health data revealing there's a higher rate of infection among the vaccinated than those who are unvaccinated. The data shows that triple-jabbed individuals accounted for the majority of COVID hospitalizations between Dec. 20, 2021 and Jan. 16, 2022. Those who got two shots follow closely behind.
The infection rate among the unvaccinated, on the other hand, remains "fairly consistent" across age groups, as compared to the jabbed.
