Bizarre demands

On the 23rd of January 2021, Brazil’s Health Ministry put out the statement citing excerpts from Pfizer’s pre contract clauses. Number one, Brazil waives the sovereignty of its assets abroad in favor of Pfizer.

Last week, I discussed the very slow rollout of vaccines in the country, intensifying the public’s doubt on whether the government’s target of inoculating 70 million Filipino adults remains achievable. The Department of Health earlier stressed that vaccines were administered as quickly as possible as soon as it was delivered, pointing its finger to the issue of supply, a reality across the world, it said.

Take the issue of Pfizer for example, a report from Gravitas News shows that the American company allegedly asks for “bizarre demands” in exchange for its vaccines, including “military bases” and other assets from poor countries.

According to Gravitas News, talks between Pfizer and countries such as Argentina and Brazil include demands from the vaccine company that is obviously a profiteering tactic.

“On the 23rd of January 2021, Brazil’s Health Ministry put out the statement citing excerpts from Pfizer’s pre contract clauses. Number one, Brazil waives the sovereignty of its assets abroad in favor of Pfizer. Number two, that the rules of the land, did not apply to Pfizer. Number three, that Brazil takes into consideration a delay in delivery. Number four, that Pfizer is not penalized for a delay in delivery,” Gravitas stressed.

Still, Pfizer sought to be exempted from all civil liability in exchange of the vaccines.

Number two, that the rules of the land, did not apply to Pfizer.

Back in the Philippines, the government hopes to secure up to 40 million doses of Pfizer vaccines, half of which will be purchased through the COVAX facility while the other half via bilateral agreement.

We can all just wonder, could Pfizer be asking the same “bizarre demands” from the government which could be the reason for the absence of its vaccine until now.

Meanwhile, Filipinos are undoubtedly exhausted and longing for the normalcy of things in the pre-pandemic world with over a year in quarantine.

Wearing a mask and/or a face shield is a must and became the new fashion trend since the state decided to implement the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) measure in Metro Manila on 15 March 2020, which expanded to other areas in the following month.

Fast forward to this year, hopes of a much looser restriction and further reopening of the economy were pushed aside as the government was forced to enforce the ECQ anew in the National Capital Region along with its nearby provinces (Laguna, Rizal, Cavite and Bulacan) amid the surge in Covid-19 cases.

Breaching the 10,000 threshold in terms of positive cases, and going on for several days, the government deemed it appropriate to revert to its draconian measures but with some modifications.

The National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) also disclosed its estimates in terms of how serious this measure affected the economy.

Formally appointed on Thursday, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua pointed out that billions of pesos in terms of possible income were lost for the almost five weeks of ECQ and its slightly looser counterpart, the Modified ECQ (MECQ).

According to him, some P19.6 billion were lost for every week of ECQ while around P14.7 billion were gone for every week of MECQ.

As such, the two weeks of ECQ and nearly three weeks of MECQ could hurt the economy by about P83.3 billion, surely a hefty amount considering its duration.

In 2020, gross domestic product (GDP) or the measure of the country’s output performed miserably with minus 9.5 percent, the lowest it has been since the Philippine Statistics Authority started collecting data in 1946.

The government’s top economic managers said that the quarantine restrictions imposed in 2020 dampened household spending by P801 billion or an average of about P2.2 billion a day.

“The fall in consumption translates into a total income loss of around P1.04 trillion in 2020 or an average of around P2.8 billion per day,” they explained.

Number three, that Brazil takes into consideration a delay in delivery. Number four, that Pfizer is not penalized for a delay in delivery.