Vaccination strategies are highly scientific, with best practices for vaccine selection and vaccination procedures depending on a country’s particular situation.

However, politicians can always be relied on to politicize an issue. In this case, former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and would-be president Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) are blatant examples. As well as singing the praises of Chinese vaccines, they have escalated the vaccination strategy issue into a Taiwan Strait issue.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday thanked two US lawmakers for proposing a resolution urging their country to scrap its “one China” policy and recognize Taiwan as an independent nation.

The concurrent resolution was introduced by US representatives Tom Tiffany and Scott Perry, both Republicans.

Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lin Wei-chou (林為洲) talked about “opposing the Chinese Communist Party [CCP]” in a recent Facebook post, writing that opposing the CCP is not the special reserve of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Not long after, many people within the KMT received a mysterious letter signed “Chinese Nationalist Party Central Committee” containing what looked like a declaration of opposition to, and a call to arms against, the CCP.

Unexpectedly, the KMT’s Culture and Communications Committee came forward with a clarification, saying that the letter was not sent by the KMT and telling the public not to believe this piece of “fake news.”