By Herbert Vego
AS a friend of Mayor Jerry P. Treñas since his pre-politics years, I hate to displease him. But on matters of conscience, it is everybody’s right to disagree without being disagreeable.
And so when I heard the news that he would impose “no vaccination, no work” in Iloilo City, I cringed, wishing he had been misquoted.
Fortunately, it eventually turned out that the idea was “for discussion purposes only” with his legal office and had to be synchronized with the eventual decision of the militarized Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF).
This writer has no desire to be jabbed with any brand of anti-Covid vaccine because I don’t see it as a solution to the perceived pandemic. To be or not to be vaccinated is a right that rests on individual freedom.
If it’s true that more or less 70% of the city’s population do not want to be vaccinated, it’s because they see it as a gamble not worth risking despite assurances from “Covid-19 experts”.
Sa totoo lang, there are no such “experts” within our Department of Health (DOH). Like you and me, our physicians have not gone beyond looking at the picture of the microscopic coronavirus that looks like a spiked planet. All the information tidbits our doctors consider as factual come from propaganda generated by the vaccine developers and billionaire financiers like Bill Gates who would make more dollars from Pfizer than from Microsoft.
You see, whenever DOH Undersecretary Maria Rosario Singh Vergeire opens her mouth on TV, it’s only to rattle statistics on accumulated Covid cases and deaths in the past 11 months, as if she belongs to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Just yesterday, Vergeire scared us with her nationwide report on “563,456 Covid-19 cases, 522,874 recoveries and 12,094 deaths”.
Is it so bad when viewed against the PSA’s finding that at least 1,500 Filipinos die daily of other diseases and causes?
Ironically, DOH has lagged behind in updating us about deaths from other diseases. The only declassified report covering the year 2019 (2020 not yet available), revealed that heart diseases killed the greatest number of patients — 659,041. The combined respiratory diseases – such as TB, asthma, emphysema and pneumonia –ranked second with 156,979 deaths.
If we go beyond panic, we realize that Covid-19 is not as “incurable” as we are made to believe. On the contrary, statistics show that the number of Covid-19 deaths in the Philippines – 12,094 so far — is not even one per barangay, since there are 42,046 barangays in the Philippines.
The World Health Organization’s “worldometer” as of yesterday ticked 112,263,225 cases, of which 2,485,386 had died. But it’s still nothing when compared to the Asian Flu pandemic of 1918 that killed 50 million worldwide by conservative estimate.
So why make a mountain out of a molehill unless the “scarecrows” stand to benefit from it?
In a previous column, I challenged DOH to declassify information on how the hospitals have done well in keeping their patients alive. That ought to appease the multitudes who now presume everybody “guilty” of the disease unless proven otherwise through expensive swab tests.
If the government orders us to pin our only hope on made-in-China vaccines, I’m afraid more than 70% of Filipinos would run away.
Our fear stems from the news that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted an emergency use authorization (EUA) to China’s Sinovac vaccine on the pretext that not even the President could prevail upon the US’ Pfizer to ship its more reliable version “without advance payment”. Some 600,000 doses of Sinovac are arriving in March.
The so-called “non-disclosure agreement” on the importation of Sinovac at PHP3,600 per double-dose has ignited allegations of corruption because other countries buy it at the equivalent of only PHP600.
Mas daku pa ang kikbak sa sakto nga prisyo?
The substandard China-made PPEs, shields and masks that have been flooding the Philippine market also speak candidly of what to expect from Sinovac and Sinoopharm vaccines.
I also see it as an insult added to injury that the Philippine government has been playing lovey-dovey with communist China, which to this day has made no official disclosure on how coronavirus leaped out of its laboratory in Wuhan, thus sparking conspiracy theories allegedly aimed at subjugating the United States, the European Union and the rest of the world.
Oh, well, that’s another story for another column.
KEL WRITES 30
WE lost a part of us in the Western Visayan media with the death of fellow columnist Ronquillo “Kel” Tolentino of Kalibo, Aklan at 5:00 a.m. yesterday.
It was not exactly unexpected because of his failing health. He was 77 and would be turning 78 on July 11 this year.
A lawyer by profession, he had been vice-governor of Aklan and chairman of the board of the Philippine Red Cross, Aklan Chapter.
His passing reminds us of a Bible verse: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7).-
Kel spent many years writing his column Reason and Concern for another paper. Most of his writings are immortalized in a book of the same title, which he launched on December 7, 2018.
In that occasion, he quoted lines from two famous poems. From Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, “The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep.”
From W. Henley’s Invictus, “It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
You have persisted and gone miles in life, Kel. You deserve a peaceful rest. So long.
