Not so fast with the vaccines

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

The announcement that the Philippines has signed an agreement to purchase the AstraZeneca vaccine raised hope that a cure is finally here and the restrictions on people’s movement would soon be lifted.

Well, not so fast. The report was misleading as it was incomplete. The fact is that the Philippines has only agreed for the AstraZeneca vaccine to be tested here. Until then nothing is definite.

Dr. Jaime Montoya, executive director of the DOST-Philippine Council for Health Research and Development, told CNN Philippines on December 2 that AstraZeneca’s application has been forwarded to the Food and Drug Administration for regulatory approval. The FDA has the final say on which firms will be allowed to conduct clinical trials here.

FDA Director-General Eric Domingo however said that his office has already received the application and tests might begin January 2021.

AstraZeneca is just applying to hold Phase 3 of the clinical trials in the country, wherein a vaccine is tested on larger populations in different countries to confirm its efficacy and safety.

Vaccine Czar Carlito Galvez, Jr. also previously admitted the risks in signing the agreement amid doubts on AstraZeneca’s efficacy. The manufacturer had confirmed that its clinical trials were put on hold twice due to concerns about two study participants who became seriously ill.

According to Galvez, AstraZeneca is offering its vaccine at $10 or almost ₱500 per dose, making it the easiest and cheapest purchase among vaccine candidates. The down payment for every dose is only $5 or nearly ₱250.

That sounds like great news, right? Monday’s press release from AstraZeneca presents “convincing evidence that [the vaccine] works,” said Science. But not everyone has been convinced. The price of AstraZeneca’s shares actually dropped on the news, and an analysis from an investment bank concluded, “We believe that this product will never be licensed in the US.” Over at STAT News, Dr. Anthony Fauci cautioned that “we’ll need to see more data before coming to a conclusion.”

The skeptics have strong reasons to be concerned: This week’s “promising” results are nothing like the others that we’ve been hearing about in November—and the claims that have been drawn from them are based on very shaky science.

Reports say that “Overall, the Oxford-AstraZeneca trials appear to include relatively few participants over the age of 55, even though this group is especially vulnerable to Covid-19. (People over 55 were not originally eligible to join the Brazilian trial at all.) Compare that to BNT-Pfizer’s trial, where 41 percent of the volunteers were over 55. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine also seems to produce relatively high rates of adverse events.”

I earlier cautioned about AstraZeneca because of its use of aborted baby cells. On December 2, 2020 LifeSiteNews reported that Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas has taken a strong stand on the possibility of a coronavirus vaccine containing fetal cell lines of aborted babies

As many COVID vaccines are beginning to be rolled out or have already done so, the bishop continued to caution Catholics in his diocese and elsewhere to look into these morally objectionable vaccines.

“The bottom line for me is, does it [the vaccine] actually contain the markers, the DNA, of aborted children? If it does, I’m not going to accept it,” he declared.

However, he expressed encouragement for others who will not accept such a vaccine either, given that it violates Church teaching.

He further said that everyone, especially Catholics, should be more informed on the morality of vaccines. He directed them to a group called Children of God for Life which “give you lots of information and it lists the vaccines that are ethically produced that do not contain the DNA of children and the vaccines that do.” He also noted the involvement of Planned Parenthood in this “atrocity.”

As I had written several times before, Planned Parenthood is a major proponent and funder of abortion in the US and other countries. In the Philippines, it is involved in the free distribution of contraceptives which are also contrary to Church teachings.

There are rumors that vaccination would be compulsory, like the government will prohibit anybody to travel unless he or she got vaccinated.

But more reports of mass opposition and insidious objectives are coming out around the world. We’ll deal with them later.