Needles and Doubt

It started with a simple question from a cousin at dinner:

"Would you still vaccinate your future kids after all that Dengvaxia stuff?"

I had just taken a bite of kare-kare. I chewed for a bit longer than necessary. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I knew the moment I opened my mouth, I’d become the uninvited spokesperson for science, ethics, and a country’s fractured trust.

There’s something absurd about the way we treat public health here. We throw away decades of medical progress faster than we throw rice at a wedding, then panic when outbreaks arrive like uninvited relatives during fiesta.
We trusted science — until it made a mistake.
And like every Filipino family feud, we never truly recover. We just stop speaking to each other and pretend everything’s fine.

For the past Months, the name "Dengvaxia" spread faster than the disease it was meant to prevent. A vaccine meant to protect became a symbol of betrayal.
And suddenly, everyone was an epidemiologist — or worse, a YouTube-certified immunologist and a Facebook degree in outrage.

We didn’t just lose faith in the vaccine. We lost faith in each other.

When the government botched the rollout, children died — not necessarily from the vaccine itself, but from fear. From politicization. From the contagious disease of doubt.
Because the virus that really infected us was mistrust.

And mistrust is harder to cure than dengue.

The aftermath was quieter but deadlier. Parents stopped lining up at health centers. Kids missed shots — not just for dengue, but for measles, polio, diphtheria. Outbreaks we thought we’d buried with the 20th century came back like plot twists we didn't ask for.

Funny, isn’t it?
We demonize needles while still injecting ourselves with misinformation.
We fear the syringe, but swallow conspiracy without question.

We say we love children, but abandon collective responsibility the moment it's inconvenient.
Freedom of choice, we say — as if viruses respect personal beliefs.
As if herd immunity were a buffet where you could opt out of the vegetables.

The real tragedy is not the initial mistake — it’s our refusal to learn beyond blame.
We don't want nuance. We want a villain we can name, shame, and meme.

By the time my cousin’s question dissolved into a debate, I realized I wasn’t angry at her. I was angry at a culture that treats science like gossip — interesting until it contradicts emotion.
And maybe I was angry at myself too, for thinking logic alone could heal what fear had already claimed.

Eventually, I looked up from my kare-kare and said, “Yes, I’d vaccinate them. Because truth isn’t perfect, but it's the only thing that has ever outlived fear.”

The table went silent. Then someone changed the topic to K-drama.

But I still think about it — how something meant to protect became a scapegoat for everything we were too tired or too wounded to untangle.
And how distrust, once rooted, spreads faster than any virus.