Pharmacist demolishes anti-vax argument

Mustafa Dhahir is a community pharmacist and medicine student at the University of Sydney who dispenses easy-to-follow health advice to his 243,000 followers on TikTok.

The 24-year-old told news.com.au he downloaded the popular social media app last year while “bored and stuck at home during the first lockdown” and it quickly developed into a platform where he shared videos about his pharmaceutical work.

Some of his most popular videos involve him debunking misinformation surrounding the coronavirus vaccine.

Recently, he made a satirical video responding to a common argument made by anti-vaxxers, titling it: “The perfect solution?”

In it he tackled the common anti-vax argument that younger, healthier people are better off getting the virus to “gain immunity naturally”.

Health advice already debunks the theory clearly, with experts warning there is still a chance of becoming seriously ill and dying of Covid no matter what your age.

While rare, it is also still possible to contract Covid more than once, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

Even fresh Australian data that shows younger adults are now featuring more prominently among people admitted to intensive care units with Covid-19 hasn’t been enough to stop anti-vaxxers holding onto the natural immunity argument – so Mustafa decided to take a different angle.

In his video, Mustafa said he “had a solution to the vax versus anti-vax situation we’re in now” – but what many didn’t realise was, the seemingly serious video actually mocked the anti-vax community in an incredibly clever way.

“I suggest a compromise – those who are pro-vaccine want to use the vaccine to gain immunity from the virus,” Mustafa begins.

“[And] those who are anti-vax want to get exposed to the virus so they can gain immunity naturally.”

Mustafa said they could instead meet “somewhere in the middle” and “expose people to a weakened version virus or just pieces of the virus”.

He explained that doing this helped people “naturally get immunity, without all the risks of being exposed to the full virus”.

“I think this is the perfect compromise between the two arguments,” he said.

What many didn’t realise though, was that Mustafa was actually describing the process of how vaccines are made and work, in a manner that appeared to tackle the anti-vax agument reasonably.

“The amount of heads this is going to go straight over,” one wrote.

“This is both sad and hilarious,” another said.

While one woman commented: “Wow, what an amazing idea … why haven’t they thought of doing this before. Ohhh wait.”

Others praised his “genius” tongue-in-cheek approach.

Among the 1200 comments were many who didn’t get the joke, which Mustafa told one commenter was “sophisticated humour”.

Mustafa told news.com.au he was passionate about spreading awareness regarding how “safe and effective” vaccines are, especially after seeing so much misinformation posted about them online.

“To see so many easy to debunk arguments that are preventing people from getting these lifesaving medicines doesn’t sit right with me,” he said.

“So I decided that platform would be a great medium to deliver correct and reliable vaccine information.

“This also meant that I can use my medical expertise and research skills to debunk vaccine misinformation while still making content easy to understand and enjoyable to my audience.”

As well as winning praise for his easy-to-digest medical advice, Mustafa has also ended up with female admirers too, with his Instagram DMs sitting at “99+ requests” since his TikTok videos blew up.

But Mustafa said he doesn’t want to use social media to date and plans to focus on his study and work commitments for now.

“I’m more of an old school kind of guy and hope to run into someone in the hallway after they drop their books or something,” he joked.