Let’s bid goodbye to COVID-19 in 2021

By Herbert Vego

 

I might have said, “Good riddance.” The year 2020 has been unfriendly to some people worldwide due to the coronavirus pandemic that some others call “plandemic” hatched by China.

The Philippines’ share of misfortunes – the eruption of Ta-al volcano, earthquakes, typhoons, floods, and crimes including those committed by law enforcers – have kept us wondering whether we are victims of bad karma.

But why not grin and bear it? Have we not been taught to think positive even in negative circumstances like the “COVID-positive?”

Unfortunately, the government that we are supposed to look up to for positivity has failed us. The Department of Health (DOH), for example, has “excelled” more in scaring – rather than caring for – us through malversation of public funds.

If there’s anything the DOH is good at, it’s in scaring us with daily statistics of COVID-19 cases. As of yesterday, the Philippines ranked 29th worldwide in the “race,” scoring a total of 469,005 cases, of which 9,067 had died.

In the span of 10 months since the “birth” of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Wuhan, China, are those numbers scary in our country with a population of almost 110 million Filipinos? As I was saying in previous columns, no less than 1,500 Filipinos die daily of various diseases and other causes.

We are told to wait for a vaccine, implying that it is our only hope for survival against an incurable disease. Common sense tells us that is a lie. If it is incurable, why does only more or less two percent of cases worldwide die? For sure more people die of tuberculosis, flu, and pneumonia than COVID-19. There is probably no barangay in the Philippines with none of them.

Why drum up COVID-19 in the media? Is it not the duty of DOH to care, not scare?

Why don’t they tell us how they helped patients come in and get out of the hospitals alive? That would have been inspiring, not depressing. Depression could kill.

Now viral is the case of Aiko Siancunco, 29, who confessed to having strangled to death his three-year-old daughter Akira and one-year-old son Kion, 1 on Christmas day in Taguig City. He is also the suspect in killing his wife Karina, contrary to his insistence that she had committed suicide in the afternoon of Dec. 24. The couple had lost their jobs in a call center.

The DOH seems to have forgotten the dictum, “Prevention is better than cure.” It is more interested in collaborating with Big Pharma which excels in manufacturing expensive drugs. Its laxity in providing us with preventive medicine has forced us to turn to online sources for information on food, vitamins and minerals that could fortify our immune system.

Only God knows how many Filipinos have suffered from hunger and diseases resulting from depression, which could be more harmful than coronavirus.

Why does the President sound fanatical about buying COVID vaccines from China? Haven’t we and many other countries already spent too much taxpayers’ money on China-made hospital equipment, PPEs, face masks and shields?

No wonder the World Bank reported last Wednesday its forecast that “China’s economy will grow 7.9% in 2021 despite a slowdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic.”

It’s not funny that China is benefitting from a disease that began in one of its cities, Wuhan in November 2019. It seems they prepared for it long before reporting its first case. By China’s own record, out of a mere 86,913 COVID cases, only 4,634 have died so far.

Abaw, to reiterate, the Philippines “scores” higher with 469,005 cases, 9,067 deaths!

Can we blame President Donald Trump for trumpeting that China’s President Xi Jin Ping had aimed the COVID “missile” at the United States? USA ranks No. 1 with 19,339,088 cases and 339,385 deaths.

No doubt most Filipinos would not want to be vaccinated, especially if the imported vaccines would come from China.

We have had enough miseries resulting from a sycophantic pivot to China in 2016. Hard to forget is that incident in 2019 when a Chinese ship intentionally rammed a Filipino fishing boat in Reed Bank, a shoal within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone. The Filipino fishermen could have drowned without their timely rescue by a Vietnamese fishing boat.

Whom can we turn to in 2021 when our leadership that is trying to please the Chinese Communist Party is arresting local “communists” on the pretext of being members or sympathizers of the New People’s Army (NPA)?

Somebody once joked – or was he serious? – that he saw our country becoming a “province” of China.

Ibang klaseng colonial mentality no?

 

-oOo-

 

MORE HAS BEEN DONE AND MORE TO BE DONE

WE doff out hats off to President Roel Z. Castro of MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) for prevailing upon the power pilferers in Iloilo City to legalize as paying customers.

There used to be a thousand or more households in Barangay San Pedro tapping stolen power through “jumpers”. The call for tipsters to report illegal connections in exchange for financial reward had impelled them to enlist for legitimate connection.

So far, MORE Power has dismantled more than a third of these illegal connections and has filed cases against hundreds of suspects for violation of the anti-power pilferage law (Republic Act No. 7832), punishable by six or more years of imprisonment.

The fire that razed two houses at Barangay Monica on December 21 also impelled the neighbors to vow never again to resort to pilferage and to seek the assistance of MORE Power’s linemen to undertake the repair of the affected wirings and service lines. They now realize that illegal connections overload the transformers.

Sana all would cooperate, since the system’s loss caused by power thefts could be plowed back to rehabilitation of equipment and facilities taken over from MORE’s predecessor. Some of them are already 30 years old, hence hazardous and in need of replacement.

Unfortunately, power pilferers tend to avoid reporting depreciation of their equipment for fear of being caught.

They ought to know better: The root cause of blackout on December 19 was the explosion of the 30-year old cable cut-off in the power cable supplying 20 MVA to the City Proper Substation.

To prevent a similar incident, MORE Power is doing an inventory of equipment that are “ripe” for upgrading and replacement.

Times there are when the company’s response team must shut power off, as they did while reconnecting and energizing the newly-constructed by-pass line to the sub-transmission line supplying power to some substations.

MORE Power’s head of utility’s customer care department, Ma. Cecilia Pe, admitted to us that the birth pain of serving 65,000 initial customers “inherited” from the previous power franchisee is intimidating. An additional 30,000 pilferers who used to use “jumpers” would be added to the roster of paying users.