Waiting until when, Mr. Covido?

By Herbert Vego

COVID is real, we are often reminded. The coronavirus is not as funny as the cartoon characters in “Scooby-Doo.”

Unfortunately, its repetitious stress in the media for being incurable also leads to stress of a different kind – one which makes us fear of impending death.

Indeed, during the 12 days of my confinement in a private hospital due to Covid-19, I exerted herculean effort to delete mental images of the Covid-positive cases dying, cremated, and moving on to kingdom come.  Incurable kasi, di ba?

I had to disbelieve that cruel notion foisted no less by our health authorities. As I myself had argued in my pre-confinement columns, if it were incurable, why does the majority of the Covid-infected recover?

To believe that it’s incurable would be to allow stress and anxiety to disarm our God-installed immune system.

Uncontrolled anxiety — a feeling of fear about what’s to come – as confirmed by the American Psychological Association, weakens the responses of our immune system because. “it decreases the body’s lymphocytes, the white blood cells that help fight off infection.”

Given a fighting immune system, who knows? Some of the 20,966 Filipino fatalities — out of 1,230,301 Covid-19 cases in the Philippines as of yesterday – might have survived.

And so while gazing at the closed door of my hospital room, I drew strength from recalling my past bouts with tuberculosis, asthma, pneumonitis, pneumonia and emphysema.  That I had survived them all at different times, I thought, was an indication of an extra-strong immune system.

This is not to downplay the role of three doctors that the hospital had assigned to me. They personally visited me daily by “long distance” – standing by the door four meters away from my bed. Gano’n pala ka-scary ang Covid?

There were expensive intravenous and oral medicines available but I had to pay in advance, they said. To repeat what I had said in a previous column, I could only have them by signing a waiver absolving them of accountability in case of death or any unwelcome consequences. I signed.

Thank God I moved out of the hospital Covid-free on day 12, thankful kahit masakit sa  bulsa.

My experience illustrates the financial misfortune that  afflicts the sick when forced to sink their bottom peso in the black market of pending-approval drugs to be saved from death!

It boggles us, no doubt, that everybody is encouraged to play guinea pig. Instead of approving and endorsing anti-Covid drugs that have already proven themselves curative, our Department of Health (DOH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “promote” two-dose vaccines that have not gone beyond sufficient research, development and trials. All that normally takes five years or more to accomplish.

When confronted with that issue in a “podcast” (episode 23), resource person Dr. Katherine O’Brien of the World Health  Organization (WHO) answered: “We don’t know yet how long immunity lasts from the vaccines that we have at hand right now. We’re following people who have received vaccinations to find out whether or not their immune response is durable over time and the length of time for which they’re protected against disease. So we’re really going to have to wait for time to pass to see just how long these vaccines last.”

Until then, all that is sure is the unprecedented billions of dollars that multinational vaccine manufacturers hope to make on the global market.

 

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A MESSAGE TO POWER CONSUMERS

OUR good friend Jonathan Cabrera, PR man of MORE Power, has an urgent message to electricity consumers of Iloilo City. Please take note that…

“In compliance with the executive order of Mayor Jerry Treñas enjoining us to limit human movement in the city, MORE Power encourages consumers to pay bills to various third-party payment partners.

“This is because we are limiting to 60 the number of persons paying at our Customer Service Office at Hotel Del Rio. We are strictly enforcing social distancing and other protocols aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19.

“We have 160  partner branches in the entire city, found in Banco de Oro (BDO), Phiippine National Bank (PNB), Landbank, Robinsons Bank, Queenbank, Ok Bank, Metrobank,  Union Bank, Palawan Pawnshop, RD Pawnshop, LBC and SM Payment Center.

“It is also possible to pay online via BDO, Metrobank, and Dragon Pay.”