The mighty press

By Alex P. Vidal

 

“Don’t hate the media, become the media.”—Jello Biafra

 

I AM a living witness to the stark reality that, despite their vast power and influence in a democratic society, the mass media in the Philippines and in the United States, are being treated shabbily and unfairly by abusive politicians and other unhinged individuals.

If they don’t like what the media report, vicious politicians and their sycophants call them as “fake news” and “corrupt.”

Others with a sordid relationship with the press follow suit out of spite and nothing else.

The Fourth Estate, however, has continued to play a major role in helping shape public opinion on the myriad of issues the society faced these past months in 2020.

Despite efforts by enemies of press freedom to discredit the media, they continued to become a part of everyone’s life; the media are the main ingredient to strengthen or weaken society.

From exposing the charlatans and sore losers in the Miss Universe Philippines 2020, red-tagging of progressive organizations, entertainers and showbiz personalities; House of Representatives’ speakership tug-of-war, scandalous insertions in the haphazardly passed five-trillion national budget for 2021, typhoon Ulysses’ wrath, “Do not-compete-with-me” Duterte-Robredo riff, Supreme Court Justice Leonen impeachment bid, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, vaccines, among other issues, people relied on the mighty press for basic information and daily news.

Media also emerged ten feet tall in their brutal relationship with defeated U.S. President Donald Trump, the number one purveyor of hate campaign against the critical press.

 

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In so many ways, media influence society; it is the media for the masses that helps them to get information about a lot of things and also form opinions and make a judgment regarding various issues.

It is the mainstream media, which keep people updated and informed about what is happening around them and the world that everyone draws something from it.

And now that the world is agog over the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccines now being enjoyed by the British, it was through the press—the much-maligned mainstream media—where we learned that the World Health Organization (WHO) was actually against persuading people on the merits of a COVID-19 vaccine, saying “it would be far more effective than trying to make the jabs mandatory.”

The WHO suggested it would be down to individual countries as to how they want to conduct their vaccination campaigns against the coronavirus pandemic.

The United Nations (UN) health agency, meanwhile, insisted “making it mandatory to get immunized against the disease would be the wrong road to take, adding there were examples in the past of mandating vaccines use only to see it backfire with greater opposition to them.”

WHO experts admitted there was a battle to be fought to convince the general public to take the vaccines as they become available.

Countries across the world are preparing to begin giving citizens COVID-19 vaccines, as cases continued to rise across the United States. California has reported over 30,000 new coronavirus cases in one day and stay-at-home orders were set to go into effect for Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley after both regions fell under the 15 percent intensive-care unit capacity benchmark, as reported by the NBC.

 

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We shouldn’t fear the COVID-19 vaccines like we fear Dracula.

Whether we like it or not, the vaccines are currently the only answers to our lingering woes since March when the pandemic caught us all by surprise and changed our life drastically.

Now that we seem to have seen the light at the end of the tunnel, some anti-vaccine fanatics have resorted to fear-mongering and disinformation campaign in a bid to strike terror in the hearts of the people.

Vaccine isn’t evil per se.

Medical Press defines it as a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease.

A vaccine typically contains a small amount of an agent that resembles a microorganism.

The agent reportedly stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize the agent as foreign, destroy it, and “remember” it, so that the immune system can more easily recognize and destroy any of these microorganisms that it later encounters.

“Vaccines can also be prophylactic (e.g. to prevent or ameliorate the effects of a future infection by any natural or “wild” pathogen), or therapeutic (e.g. vaccines against cancer are also being investigated; see cancer vaccine),” added the Medical Press.

The term vaccine derives from Edward Jenner’s 1796 use of the term cow pox (Latin variolæ vaccinæ, adapted from the Latin vaccīn-us, from vacca cow), which, when administered to humans, provided them protection against smallpox.

With coronavirus vaccines on the horizon, when and where will most Americans get their shots?

As of this writing, many of the details were still being worked out, as regulators reviewed the first vaccine candidates.

A federal panel of vaccine experts is reportedly meeting this week to consider Pfizer’s vaccine, and again next week for Moderna’s.

If the advisory group gives a thumbs-up, the Food and Drug Administration could green-light the shots soon after, setting into motion the country’s largest-ever vaccination effort.

It will take many months to reach everyone, and expect bumps in the road.

 

(The author, who is now based in New York City, is a former editor of two dailies in Iloilo, Philippines)