President Rodrigo Duterte on Thursday blasted anti-vaxxers, or nonbelievers of vaccines, saying they should go ahead and die instead of putting people around them at risk.
“May mga iba diyan na ayaw talaga magbakuna, e ‘di okay na lang ‘yan sa akin. Ang problema kung makahawa ka. The problem with being a bravado, ‘yang hambog, sabihin mo ‘e ayaw ko kasi hindi naman ako naniniwala diyan,'” he said.
“If I were to talk to you in the gutter language, sabihin ko sa iyo, ‘p****g ina mo, mamatay ka na kung gusto mo limang beses, ang problema ang mahawa mo,’” he added.
Duterte himself has yet to receive a Covid-19 vaccine.
A March 2021 survey conducted by Pulse Asia found that 61 percent of Filipinos did not want to get vaccinated and only 16 percent were willing to get inoculated.
Of those unwilling to receive the vaccines, 84 percent cited safety concerns, seven percent were concerned about vaccine effectiveness and six percent said a vaccine was not needed against Covid-19.
The country has recorded more than 900,000 Covid-19 cases. John Ezekiel J. Hirro