Tempus fugit

BEFORE I get to the topic, I read a November 15 article in the Bangkok Post that about 45,000 tourists have arrived in Thailand since they eased up on quarantines for fully vaccinated visitors a few weeks ago. Since November 1, 18 more airlines have started flights to Suvarnabhumi Airport bringing flights to just that hub to 2,008. They are studying ways to open more and make the entry protocols more efficient and friendly. On Channel News Asia on the same day, I read that Singapore is adding India, Indonesia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to their vaccinated travel lane, joining major countries like the US, Germany, the UK and South Korea which are already on the lane that allows quarantine-free travel into Singapore. Also read in this paper on Tuesday that India has opened to the fully vaccinated without any quarantine. At least some countries are getting the point. What matters is being fully vaccinated.

One more thing, don't some editors of our newspapers know better? The Philippine Star on November 16 had this headline "Philippine daily vaccination rate again breaches 1 million." Besides awful grammar, it should have read "Philippines daily vaccination rate exceeds 1 million again." Yes, it went above a million, but unless they are anti-vaxxers, that is something good. Breach can mean exceed or go beyond, but in a negative context. As in violation, like in breaking a law or failing to observe a regulation! Here is Webster's definition of breach: "infraction or violation of a law, obligation, tie or standard." The Star is not the only paper in the Philippines to use breach in this erroneous way, but I have not seen it wrongly used in any other country's English newspapers. Perhaps one paper here used it erroneously by misreading a thesaurus to try to sound sophisticated, and the other publications breached rules by foolishly following them.