Vaccine issue is not just a health policy issue, it is also a financial issue. Due to cost, Malaysia so far has not embarked on a 100% vaccination approach so there will be a group of people who will not be vaccinated unless they are willing to pay for it. So for those who are worried about the safety, obviously they should be able to choose to not be vaccinated unless they are under special circumstances. The special circumstances that will require you to be vaccinated I think will be in health industry, which you are facing a choice of high risk of being infected or be the first to use a new vaccine, so unless you quit job otherwise it is a tough choice either way and government will probably just force the vaccine on you. Another special circumstance will be if you want to travel oversea to a country which has embarked on mass vaccination, pretty sure that country would not want a foreign visitor wasting their effort by bring in virus into their country again.

So only if you are not in health industry, nor plan to travel oversea, that you will have a choice. Otherwise you have no choice but to do it.

Also, a mass vaccination approach main objective is try to bring covid under control much as MCO is, the goal is to expect very low number of local cases after that is done. So the vaccination processes need to be carried out quite quickly so that at a certain period when the vaccine is most effective, majority of the local populations are immune in order to stop the spread more effectively. It should not be drag too long such as a few years to vaccinate people because the vaccine itself is expected to be most effective for months only.

Over the long term, it is not sure how often people need to be re-vaccinated again. It all depends on whether covid will seemingly disappear after most of the world is vaccinated, or it becomes a recurrent outbreak from time to time. The first mass vaccination in a way is a grand test to study the effect, and hopefully achieve the most positive outcome ie truly eradicate covid to almost non-existent.

This post has been edited by happyking4ever: Jan 5 2021, 12:47 PM

That depends on whether Malaysia will later allow special permit for certain companies to import extra vaccine on their owns for profit purpose, just to vaccinate those rich folks who prefer to pay a premium to choose which vaccine they will use.