Shaggy says he will be at the front of the line once the first shipment of COVID-19 vaccines hit Jamaica.
Conspiracy theorists have voiced their concerns following the disclosure that a viable vaccine has been found to combat the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. While many have celebrated the Pfizer covid vaccine, many others have expressed reservations, including celebrities and artists. Veteran dancehall artiste Shaggy is one of those welcoming the news of a vaccine.
Shaggy told the Jamaica Observer that if offered, he would be first in line to receive it. While many sectors of the worldwide economy have been hit hard during the pandemic, few have suffered as much as the arts and entertainment industry.
Shaggy’s rationale is that this is not the first vaccine that he’s taken and that it was made to give humans a fighting chance at survival against a persistent virus.
“This isn’t di first vaccine we’ve taken; we’ve taken many vaccines in our lives. How many years now we a see Chinese and [other] Asian people a walk roun’ wid mask pan dem face; SARS has been around for a long time. COVID is a part of SARS,” he said.
He was making reference to the fact that COVID-19 is also known as SARS-CoV-2. The “It Wasn’t Me” singer added that he trusted the science behind the vaccine. He also said that many people believe that the vaccine was hurriedly created, but he believed that scientists had been preparing for this eventuality. “They didn’t just come up with a vaccine in a year. This has been in production for the longest time – they knew it was coming,” he said.
He went on to say that the world economy was suffering, which is another reason he believed that the vaccine was legitimate because the world powers needed things to return to normal.
“Dem want to fix it. It’s not good business for them to make people die,” he said.
Shaggy also thrashed the theories that the vaccine would somehow be used to track humans adding that this was already being done through cellphone users via location data. He joins the voices of two other prominent Jamaicans, Prime Minister Andrew Holness and former prime ministers Bruce Golding and P J Patterson, who all said they were ready to take the vaccine.
