Politifact: There's no evidence these politicians were killed over their countries’ refusal of COVID-19 vaccines

[Emily]

https://www.politifact.com/factchec...-no-evidence-these-politicians-were-killed-o/
If Your Time is short

• There is no evidence that the deaths of Jovenel Moïse, John Magufuli and Didier Ignace Ratsiraka were connected to their governments’ refusing COVID-19 vaccines.
• Moïse was the only one assassinated, and experts say his death will likely only further hinder the vaccine effort in Haiti, not help it.
• Ratsiraka was not Madagascar’s president at the time of his death. His last term ended in 2002.

This could be the foundation of the rumors about Ratsiraka's death:
https://translate.google.com/transl...agazette-dgi.com/?p=55360&prev=search&pto=aue
http://www.lagazette-dgi.com/?p=55360
Didier Ratsiraka: For access to the anti-covid vaccine

Posted on March 18, 2021
Former President Didier Ratsiraka broke his silence. Yesterday on his Facebook page, he indicated that people should be free to be vaccinated or not. The position of those responsible for the Big Island concerning the vaccination against the coronavirus is still at the center of the debates. The Minister of Public Health undoubtedly hoped to close this chapter by arguing that "the country is not against vaccination, but remains cautious and observes first", but this is not the case. Former President Didier Ratsiraka is clear to him on the subject. For him, we cannot force people to be vaccinated. Just as we cannot deny them this opportunity. "In the same way that we did not force people to be vaccinated against polio, but we used persuasion, we also cannot it seems to me to force people to be vaccinated against Covid-19 .But on the contrary, we cannot either prohibit people from being vaccinated against this dangerous virus, ”he explains...

 

[Emily]

Jovenel Moïse's adminstration was trying to procur vaccines, so that blows the notion that he was killed for being resistant to vaccine use.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/democraciaabierta/haiti-assassination-president-vaccination/
The assassination of Haiti’s president may worsen its response to COVID-19

Haiti hasn’t vaccinated a single person yet. Poverty and vaccine hesitancy don’t help, but political instability will make everything worse

• Español Rashmee Roshan Lall

9 July 2021, 12.00am

...
But Haiti’s politics – for which there is no vaccine and, seemingly, no cure – cannot fully explain its current plight as the only country in the western hemisphere to have no COVID-19 doses to deliver to its people.

There is also the temptation to blame Haitians’ well-documented vaccine hesitancy, which has consistently meant lower immunisations against preventable diseases such as diphtheria and tuberculosis. Faced with a cholera epidemic in 2010 – the world’s worst in recent history – many Haitians responded with a magnificent burst of courage and illogicality. Mikwòb pa touye Ayisyen – a Haitian Kreyòl saying meaning that a mere microbe cannot kill Haitians – summed up the commonly held view.

After COVID-19 vaccines were developed and started to be delivered in many countries, videos began to circulate in Haiti claiming that there was a conspiracy to spread HIV/AIDS and malaria via the jabs. Justin Colvard, Haiti country director for the NGO Mercy Corps, noted that the rumours and disinformation included the belief that “COVID-19 was not real, and that if it was real, Haitians were invulnerable to it.” The parallels with the refusal to take cholera seriously were obvious. It was mikwòb pa touye Ayisyen all over again.


Anti-AstraZeneca

But the Haitian government’s halting approach to vaccinating its people against COVID-19 may be about something else than irrationality or organisational missteps. Specifically, it’s about the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
Around the world, enough people have expressed concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine to cause serious problems for vaccination roll-outs. Britain doesn’t like to acknowledge this fact because AstraZeneca was born at Oxford University (hence its name), but it’s certainly true in parts of England – as I have seen as a volunteer in vaccination clinics there over the past six months. It’s also true in France, Denmark, Italy and several other European countries.


It’s true in swathes of Africa, with Malawi blaming public doubt over the vaccine for its poor uptake and the need to destroy nearly 20,000 expired doses. It’s true in the US, which has not even licensed AstraZeneca for use. And it’s true in Haiti, which in April refused the 750,000 AstraZeneca doses it was offered for free under the WHO’s COVAX scheme for poorer countries.

Instead, Haiti asked for any other drugmaker’s vaccine – an impractical request because the country lacks a national ‘ultra-cold chain’, which limits the choice to AstraZeneca or the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, neither of which need to be stored at extremely low temperatures.

In May 2021, when a surge in coronavirus cases helped dull the Haitian government’s resistance to AstraZeneca, its request for the very doses it rejected could not be fulfilled because the Serum Institute of India (the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer) had production problems, and the global need was so great that vaccine makers in general couldn’t keep up.

About 130,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine were supposed to arrive in Haiti in mid-June, but the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has admitted they are delayed indefinitely. On 21 June, the Biden White House promised 14 million doses for Latin America and the Caribbean, putting Haiti in line for much-needed relief. But by the end of the month, the US embassy in Haiti offered only a hopeful tweet about sharing more news soon.

Clearly, Haiti’s unvaccinated plight illustrates a larger issue: AstraZeneca’s brand equity. This vaccine, easy to store and use and cheaper than the alternatives, has been hit by wave after wave of bad publicity. The Oxford University scientists who developed it and the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company that manufactured it – for no profit while the pandemic lasts – have done a poor job of communicating the facts. In the process, public trust in AstraZeneca has waned.

 

[Emily]

Have to wonder if some vaccine diplomacy was going on prior to Moïse's assassination looking at the timing here. I'd hate to think vaccines were being withheld due to a lack of concession on some matter unrelated to the pandemic.

https://twitter.com/USEmbassyHaiti/status/1409537136144027653


U.S. Embassy Haiti @USEmbassyHaiti

As a vital part of our commitment to share safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines worldwide, the Biden admin is actively engaging with Haitian gov't officials on how to get vaccines to Haiti ASAP. We hope to share more news on our commitment to Haiti in the immediate future.

10:40 AM · Jun 28, 2021



First vaccinations given in Haiti since start of pandemic

First vaccinations given in Haiti since start of pandemic
Danica Coto
The Associated Press
Published Friday, July 16, 2021 6:58PM EDT

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- Health care workers and senior citizens were the first people vaccinated on Friday in Haiti as part of a test run after the country recently received 500,000 doses from the United Nations.

The vaccinations were given to 38 people at the Hospital University of Peace in the capital of Port-au-Prince under the supervision of Haiti's Health Ministry, the Pan American Health Organization told The Associated Press.

On Wednesday, Haiti received its first vaccine doses since the pandemic began as part of a U.S. donation to the United Nations' COVAX program for low-income countries.