Manley Nowaseb
The World Health Organisation (WHO) and the ministry of health have recently pleaded with churches to adhere to Covid-19 measures to restrict the spread of the virus as well as to encourage members to get vaccinated.
WHO representative in Namibia Dr Charles Sagoe-Moses also expressed that the Covid-19 vaccine saved millions of lives, and further urged church leaders to address their disinformation and misinformation with relevant scientific information.
This leads me to the question, ‘what is relevant scientific information’ in respect of the current Covid-19 issue.
The above assertions by Dr Sagoe-Moses to the church leaders is rather outward, accrued and opaque of its relevance, especially in view of the speed and scientific transformation of the Covid-19 activity.
Every day, many scientific studies are released to help answer critical questions about Covid-19 within and around the WHO.
These studies from multiple research centres around the world and by the WHO are disseminated in large numbers on multiple platforms accessible to billions of people.
As these different types of scientific answers are being released, it can be difficult to stay on top of the latest and/or the most reliable research information.
There has been evidence where scientific information about Covid-19, which has been published by some trusted science research institutions from around the world, have been deliberately retracted (removed) from the platforms they were on.
The public is in the know that there are different theories on Covid-19; may those be lies or truths, the society must learn to establish that – or the WHO must prove by science that those theories are incorrect, but the WHO can’t just control scientific information like they want to think for the people what scientific information is true.
People are frustrated. The entire Covid-19 pandemic has been tainted as a ‘socio-political propaganda’ and it could be true as Dr Kalumbi Shangula expressed himself that ‘incorrect information is the most damaging effect on the efforts of vaccination.’
But my question to Dr Shangula, Dr Sagoe-Moses and the WHO remains: What is correct ‘scientific’ information about Covid-19?
Tell the people something. Covid-19 cannot just suddenly come and people should put on mask and have social distancing and sanitise their hands and now Covid-19 is going in waves?
How many other waves are coming and how did we emerge to all these theories?
So, abiding the above as is, do we blame the church fraternity to distrust questions of science as it is becoming clear to say that science is self-contradicting, inaccurate, prejudiced and thus becoming irrelevant?
Therefore, it is inevitable that if the grounds of science are not proven or are defective – the church as a body enabled in faith, to believe in the unseen, will find ground to turn to their unseen God – and that cannot be wrong.