Anti-vaxxers who gave in are now scrambling to 'undo' their jab

At 44, Vishal Hiwale, bravely states that he neither believes in Covid-19 nor the anti-Covid vaccines. Even as two waves of the coronavirus swept through the country, Hiwale held his ground and refused to wear a mask or get inoculated. Fast forward to November, he stands one jab down, one more to go. Meanwhile, 22-year-old Marian Mashraki, whose parents raised her to believe that the best medicine is all natural, after months of deliberation made peace with the needle and is currently jabbed with two doses of the vaccine.
In a surprising twist in the pandemic tale, some anti-vaxxers like Hiwale and Mashraki are either getting vaccinated or are planning to. Not because of a change of heart but begrudgingly given the social pressure, stricter curbs and workplace mandates that warn of severe action against the unvaccinated. "I got caught for ticketless train travel. Neither me nor my wife were getting train passes or entry into malls for being unvaccinated. We have children and it was getting difficult to take them to school or go shopping... Also, I heard that the state may bar the unvaccinated from availing government schemes," rues Hiwale, describing what drove him to the vaccine camp.
For a newly graduated Mashraki, taking the jab was about getting herself out of a sticky wicket. "When you're brazen about not vaccinating, your peer group ostracies you. Also, access to malls, restaurants, movies and trains are a huge issue. I can't boycott these activities. My life got really restricted," says the Vashi resident, for whom the stakes of trading foreign university prospects with her anti-vaccine stance were also high. "My parents still don't want it but my brother, who recently got into engineering college, will soon get vaccinated."
But even as many vaccine deniers yield to the Covid shot, anti-vaxxers are a hardened bunch who continue to cling to their fixed ideologies. "I don't believe in Covid-19. It's an international conspiracy to create fear and vaccines are a way of genetically modifying humans," insists Hiwale while Sudhir Madan, 41 continues to spout anti-vax sentiments ranging from "mRNA vaccines contain aborted babies" to "Covid is a way to profit pharmaceuticals" even as he gears up for his jab out of fear of losing the job that he recently found after a year of being without one.
Carl Pereira, 28 and his family in Mulund have been taking turns to get vaccinated even though they don't fear the virus, they say. "My mother's a school teacher so vaccine was compulsory. For me, planning international travel became a headache," says Pereira. Ashwini Tamde, a 37-year-old government employee has been holding out on vaccination until her salary was under threat. "See, I don't trust the authenticity of these vaccines but I'm left with no option."
Consequently, the Covid world that was divided into pro-vax and anti-vaxxers is now seeing a third category of vaccine sceptics who caved but are now scrambling to 'de-vaccinate' or 'undo' their shots with alternative remedies that they claim would "cleanse" their body of the alleged "metals and toxins". Madan, who managed to dodge BMC marshals and ticket checkers during his maskless-ticketless travels, has found a way to deal with his post-vaccine anxiety. "I put my wife on a vegan diet but I plan to use detox foot pads on my body to absorb chemicals from the blood through the skin." Refusing to let go of her "natural resistance" Mashraki put herself on a self-administered diet after the jab. "It didn't feel good," she says after being fully vaxxed.
"As a family we've never been pro-medication. So, I ate raw food instead of cooked food for a few days to clean my blood."Madan and Mashraki aren't alone in their attempts at trying to "purify their body of vax content". Some practitioners of alternative medicine such as Madan Dubey of the Azadi Bachao Andolan also recommend arguable detox regimens including "once-a-week enema" and "blood thinners" for anxious anti-vaxxers-turned-vaxxed. "They did it out of coercion and now want a fix. Only if they promise not to take further shots, we prescribe ways to neutralise the effect of the vaccine," he says.
Bioethics expert and one of the founders of Forum for Medical Ethics Society Dr Amar Jesani says, "One's need to do shuddhikaran or purify their body is more of a cultural and psychological concept than a medical one." While these so-called cures - eating raw food or colon-cleansing enema - he believes, draw from naturopathy that are harmless "unless one overdoes it", they certainly "won't make the vaccine disappear from the body" he says while calling on the Drugs Controller and government to play their part, "if alternative remedies without scientific base are being peddled."