MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Is it vaccine hesitancy or aversion? At the rate seniors are avoiding vaccination – so far the only known protection against the killer virus -- you have to wonder where their doubts are coming from. Fear of the needle? Before they got old, they were young, and when they were young, they must have experienced or witnessed some very painful vaccinations. Vaccinations then and now are not the same; just look at today’s very fine syringes. Because they fear the ghost of Dengvaxia, unfairly associating dengue with coronavirus and  Sinovac, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, etc. (According to the Public Attorney’s Office, Dengvaxia has killed 165 youngsters.) Is it because “everybody” has heard too many stories about the side effects of vaccines? Tune in to PTV before the 6 p.m. news and there’s a whole litany of them listed in full color on the screen. Additionally, can they avoid seeing all those extreme close-ups of arms being pricked in bakuna sites all over the country? Are seniors at the short end of gossip, rumor, and fake news spread willy-nilly or maliciously by neighbors, amigas and amigos? Or do they agree that the biggest pharma companies are in a conspiracy to make trillions of dollars by culturing and spreading such a pernicious virus to every continent on the planet? Theory or sci-fi fantasy? The hard fact is that Delta (D as in deadly) variant — 60 percent more transmissible, at speeds of a few seconds – has landed on our shores, causing a surge in infections throughout the country. It’s also a fact that seniors are considered “vulnerable” to the disease: Many COVID-19 fatalities are senior citizens, most of them unvaccinated. From the gospel according to St. Anthony Fauci, America’s most trusted infectious-disease expert, “We are seeing an outbreak of the unvaccinated.” Another doctor with the US National Institutes of Health: “If you’re vaccinated right now, your likelihood of getting severely sick is 25-fold reduced.” Why quote American experts? Well, if our dearly beloved senior citizens were born between the ‘40s and ‘50s it is likely they would’ve come under the influence of a “colonial mentality” that thinks anything US-made has gotta be the best, the most, highly trustworthy.