Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

The annual government-funded influenza vaccination program was launched on Monday, offering people aged 65 or older and high-risk groups a quadrivalent flu vaccine before anyone else. This year there are four brands of vaccines, but some politicians are again using misinformation to stir fear among the public, causing some who need the vaccine the most to put it off or refuse to get vaccinated.

The four vaccines in the program are an egg-based vaccine by French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, an egg-based vaccine by Taiwan-based Adimmune Corp, a cell-cultured vaccine manufactured in Germany by Taiwan-based TTY Biopharm Co Ltd, and — new to the program — an egg-based vaccine using ingredients from South Korea and filled by Taiwan-based Medigen Vaccine Biologics Corp.

Robert Kennedy Jr, scion of the Massachusetts-based Kennedy political clan, is expected to announce tomorrow that he would not take part in any Democratic Party primary election, but would instead run as an independent candidate in next year’s US presidential election. This would pit him against fellow Democrat US President Joe Biden, who intends to run for re-election. The US media are not making a fuss about Kennedy’s plan to run, nor is anyone in the Democratic Party calling for “unity” or “consolidation,” or saying that anyone with low opinion poll ratings should quit the race. Indeed, Kennedy has the right to run if he wants to.

Voting and standing in elections are both statutory rights in any democracy. With the rules of the game set out beforehand, the emphasis is on open and fair competition, not allowing politicians to act as “kingmakers” by forcing political parties with different philosophies to cobble together a pair of electoral candidates. While such a “teamwork” strategy might be euphemistically called “uniting the opposition,” its real aim is to divide the spoils after winning the election, all in the name of “rotation of parties in government.”