We’re tops for being worst

The weakest being usually rescued first, I’ve made it to the top of the list of people to be vaccinated. Well, second only to the front-liners, as is only fair, but that should put my mind at rest.

But again, when I hear about the pasang-awa efficacy, in spite of their comparative price, of the Chinese vaccines apparently favored by the government—Sinovac and Sinopharm—I can’t help but worry.

If anything is commonsensical about it all, it has to do with the China-first policy of the Duterte regime. Yet unapproved by our own Food and Drug Administration (FDA), these Chinese vaccines were already being promoted to us. In fact, Sinopharm had found its way into the arms of certain members of the Presidential Security Group, although not into the arm of the President himself, which raises the suspicion that those soldiers took the vaccine for him, as they might take a bullet.

Bad decision

I hear the Chinese themselves are not sold on their own vaccines. I don’t know what or who to believe anymore. One thing sure, it always turns out a bad decision for me to stay up to listen to the President: I end up losing sleep and more confused, not better informed. A well-past-bedtime intruder, the President may yet cause another pandemic—insomnia.

The President’s choir of alternative voices—chiefly retired Gen. Carlito Galvez Jr., the pandemic czar and now also the czar for vaccine affairs, Health Secretary Francisco Duque III and presidential spokesperson Harry Roque—is no help, either. Here’s their song’s refrain of promise and excuse: “The vaccine is coming, itaga sa bato (with even a date given). The delivery has been delayed due to some technicality.”

Now, after all the glowing presidential advertisement for China and its vaccines, we are told, by our own FDA no less, that it might be best for our front-liners to pass up Sinopharm or Sinovac and wait for a more efficacious vaccine; neither is good enough for those operating in high-risk environments.

“Oh,” adds the government’s voice, ”but they are, of course, free to take it if they want it.” That seems the new twisted form of freedom under Duterte, in case you didn’t recognize it.

It also makes for a twisted sense of logic: The Chinese vaccines may be less efficacious than the other vaccines and, yes, also more expensive, but “they’re certainly better than none.”

Once again this regime has put us between a rock and a hard place. We’ve been there, to be sure, since the government of Duterte surrendered our sovereignty over our West Philippine Sea to the Chinese and allowed them to build islands there as military bases. Thus, our own fishermen have been deprived of their lifelong living off those waters. And, to add insult to injury, hordes and hordes of Chinese, without having to worry about visas, have been coming to take up jobs for businesses their own capitalists or government, without having to worry about taxes, have set up.

To the government’s corrupt mind, anything is better than going to a supposedly sure war if the Chinese were not pandered to. Why does a nation go to war, pray tell, if not to defend its sovereignty?

Other alternatives

Surely, there are other, more decent alternatives to war— and to Chinese vaccines—alternatives only normally available to people living in a democracy. But, it would seem, decent, life-saving alternatives are precisely what this government would rather deny us.

How else could we explain its strange attitude toward a scheme whereby companies import vaccines of their choice for their own workers, and mayors do the same for their citizens? Surely, it lightens not only the load for the national government but also assures the vaccination of more people—poor people. Is it, by the way, any coincidence their choice is neither Sinovac nor Sinopharm? A survey shows that Filipinos trust China least, when it comes to vaccines, among other things.

Anyway, it’s no deal. The government has appropriated the exclusive right to purchase vaccines—it will take their money and buy for them. Does this government have an undeclared war against democracy? If it has, it seems to be succeeding. Yet, in its pompously declared war against drugs and corruption, it has met with dismal failure.

And here I sit in front of the TV, teary-eyed with envy as I watch Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and even protest-torn Myanmar beginning to vaccinate their citizens. And us? We’re tops for being worst—tops in mismanaging the pandemic.

So, will I ever get vaccinated? I do intend to, of course, but at the time and with the vaccine of my choosing. I shall myself— not my government—exercise sovereignty over what goes into my arm. If none be my only free choice, so be it.