What Covid-19 can be all about

WHAT the pandemic spread has come to in India must be an eye-opener for the Philippines in another respect. Remember that of late, leading world brands of vaccines have been contending for acceptance by the Philippine government. There have been Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, and China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm. For reasons yet unknown to the public, Pfizer and AstraZeneca seem to have beaten the field in the race for emergency use authorization or EUA issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) though the offer of Sinovac came clearly ahead. It would appear that the first two brands have been the more commercially minded. Thus, their early attention to FDA approval; Sinovac was there mainly to truly address the Covid-19 crisis in the Philippines. So, it happens that though President Duterte himself has gotten himself inoculated (reportedly by Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd) with Sinopharm, that didn’t prove license enough for the brand to be given to Filipinos en masse. The President had no choice but to take back his announced authorization for its use pending certification by the FDA.

Now, there has been this Chinese donation of more than a million doses of Sinovac for use by Filipinos. The trouble is that the donation comes at a time when tensions have risen at the West Philippine Sea on account of the alleged Chinese aggression on Julian Felipe Reef by some 220 militia ships of China’s People’s Liberation Army. It is in the frenzy of such propaganda that the donation of over a million doses of Sinovac by China was promoted by traditional US rah-rah boys led by the tandem of retired Associate Justice Antonio Carpio and former Foreign Affairs secretary Albert del Rosario as a candy treatment of the Chinese aggression on Julian Felipe Reef. Allies of the two in both social and mainstream media were one in agitating for Philippine belligerence against China, no matter the genuine humanitarian spirit embodied in the donation of Sinovac.