To be or not to be vaccinated?

By Herbert Vego

 

FILIPINA nurse May Parsons, employed by the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS) for 24 years, has shared recognition with 90-year-old Margaret Keenan — the first official recipient of the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. It was she who jabbed the vaccine into the left arm of the British nonagenarian.

Naughty minds might see through the UK’s choice as “escapist” because, in case Keenan dies, it could always be attributed to old age.

Thousands of other British citizens have already been vaccinated. The British-made version from AstraZeneca, however, remains to be released.

Two other early recipients of the Pfizer vaccine in the UK, showed allergic reactions. Worse reactions could trigger massive public refusal to be vaccinated.

In an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Anthony Fauci –director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — said such reports should not prevent people from getting the vaccine.

Most of us Filipinos would obviously opt for a wait-and-see attitude vis-à-vis the question: To be or not to be vaccinated?

Although the vaccines that are also being developed by different countries enjoy massive push from the World Health Organization (WHO) and many governments worldwide, it is the right of every individual to refuse or accept it on the principle of “informed consent”.

Has the streamline media been manipulated to propagate the impression that vaccination is the only way to beat the COVID-19 pandemic?

To criticize that impression on social media is to be accused of peddling “misinformation.” One’s post could therefore be deleted by “admin” during the “fact-check” kuno.

Even reputable American and European doctors could find their own contrary opinions erased for the same reason. Indeed, there are also scientists who use the internet media to verbalize their opposition to mandatory vaccination for being unnecessary and experimental, hence could do more harm than good.

Their “dissenting” opinion is that the disease is not as “incurable” and as “pandemic” as projected on radio, TV and print media. Their idea of “staying safe” hinges on keeping off the vaccine on the principle of informed consent.

Not all giant drug makers are in a hurry to ride on the pandemic for fat cash. There’s Merck & Co, for example, that seems absent from the race to develop COVID-19 vaccines and drugs. Actually, the company is in the process of developing two kinds of COVID-19 vaccines. But Roger Perlmutter, president of Merck Research Laboratories, believes that 12 months is not enough to roll out a still unproven vaccine technology in the market.

To say that the perceived pandemic is a “plandemic” conceptualized by China and the World Health Organization (WHO) to cripple the United States is not exactly without basis, no matter how circumstantial. After all, the USA ranks No. 1 in the number of cases counted down by the WHO.

It is undisputed that the coronavirus originated from Wuhan, China, and that WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of Ethiopia met with China’s President Xi Jinping in January 2020.

A Chinese renegade journalist in Hongkong by the pen name of Miles Guo once wrote that the coronavirus that accidentally leaked from a Wuhan laboratory could have been “cultured” by the Chinese Communist Party.

There was a time when US President Donald Trump threatened to permanently cut off U.S. funding of the World Health Organization (WHO). The U.S. being the largest sponsor of the Geneva-headquartered UN organization, Trump deplored its alleged failure to respond quickly to the coronavirus outbreak.

On the other hand, how could anybody discount the profit motive behind the projection of the vaccine as the only solution to the coronavirus infection? Would American billionaire Bill Gates – the founder of Microsoft Corporation – have sunk in US $420 million to formulate and produce Pfizer’s anti-COVID vaccine for nothing?

But do statistics support the indispensability of the vaccine?

If COVID were incurable, why do the vast majority of diagnosed patients recover?

The WHO’s daily escalating “worldometer” of COVID-19 infections had hit a total 71,437,330 number of cases worldwide as of yesterday, but only 1,601,168 of them ended in death.

The US share was 16,295,458 cases, of which 302,750 had died.

The Philippines’ 447,039 total cases against its 8,709 deaths in nine long months look comparatively insignificant since the deaths comprise only around two percent. In our country with a population pushing 110 million, why be so scared?

Since COVID has more or less similar symptoms as those of flu and pneumonia, who is to say it’s far worse than these two? The WHO data published in 2018 showed the combined influenza and pneumonia deaths in the Philippines to have reached 75,843.

In fact, the latest annual statistics from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) revealed that no less than 1,500 Filipinos die daily – yes, daily – mostly from other killer diseases.

The so-called Spanish Flu in 1918 to 1920 is said to have killed more or less 50 million of the world’s 1.8 billion population. There was no anti-flu vaccine then, but such a real pandemic eventually faded away.

Considering today’s world population of 7.8 billion, 1.6-million COVID deaths pale in comparison to 50 million Spanish-flu deaths a century ago. So why classify COVID-19 as a pandemic unless it’s to drum up the “indispensability” of several anti-COVID vaccines now being developed and marketed by Big Pharma?

The WHO-imposed restrictions worldwide – face-shielding, masking, hand-washing and social distancing – could have been implemented without community quarantines and business lockdowns that have rendered millions of entrepreneurs worldwide bankrupt and their employees jobless.

 

-oOo-

 

MORE MAINTENANCE FOR BRIGHTER CHRISTMAS

MORE Electric and Power Corp. could not have done extensive rehab work in the past weeks without temporarily shutting off power lines to upgrade distribution transformers, replace electric poles and crossbars, tension sagging lines, and fix hotspot connectors.

Accidental brownouts have also been traced to bats and rats getting electrocuted on primary lines. Usually, damages arising from such accidental brownouts entail immediate, 24-7 attention.

“We have mobile units equipped with a global positioning system or GPS. They move around the city to check the power lines,” MORE PR man Jonathan Cabrera told us. “We also have a command center that alerts linemen to proceed to the exact location of power outages.”

Brownouts may also be caused by pilferages that overload the transformers. That is why MORE Power is now in the thick of implementing its Christmas promo called “Jumper Mo, Noche Buena Ko” that rewards P3,000 for tipsters who report pilferers engaged in reselling electricity to at least five neighbors.

By shooing the power thieves away, MORE Power hopes to improve electricity supply, lower the monthly bills and boost its capacity to serve a bigger consumer base.

Cabrera admitted that delay in replacement of meters and delivery of electricity bills have irked consumers, would now be a thing of the past. A common problem used t be where to trace power meters transferred by the previous distribution utility from one location to another.

As MORE Power president and chief operating officer Roel Castro has repeatedly stressed, MORE Power has set aside a budget of P1.9 billion to rehabilitate and upgrade its facilities within three years.

Hala bira!