Undermining a vaccine

WHILE it is easy to study a biological agent like a virus dispassionately and objectively, such will no longer be the case when that virus is now causing misery and havoc on people’s lives. The SARS-CoV-2 virus may be merely a biological entity, but the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) that it caused is now a social reality that has become embedded in the operations of power, and thus of politics.

Many medical doctors and scientists are gnashing their teeth and expressing their frustration at how the frontline medical workers of the Philippine General Hospital of the University of the Philippines (UP-PGH) have mobilized against CoronaVac, a vaccine made by Sinovac, a Chinese pharmaceutical company. They say that the PGH medical professionals have turned into political partisans, have further contributed to the propagation of mistrust toward vaccination and are propelling the high rate of vaccine hesitancy in the country, with only less than 1 out of 5 Filipinos willing to be vaccinated, according to a recent survey.