Science and politics
The recent survey conducted by the Social Weather Stations (SWS) showed that 91% of the Filipinos are welcoming the year 2021 with hope. Optimism is higher at 94% and 93% among the “not poor” and the “borderline poor”, respectively, while only 89% among the poor are hopeful for a better year ahead.
Although it is noted that the optimistic rating is second to the lowest since 2009, another pollster Pulse Asia attributed the high optimistic rating to the Filipinos’ positive attitude about the coming year despite the pandemic.
Psychology tells us that optimism reflects the belief that the outcomes of events or experiences will generally be positive. For the year 2021, science is one possible reason to pin on our hopes to end the pandemic. In less than a year, several pharmaceutical companies around the world have produced a potent weapon in the war against the pandemic, the COVID-19 vaccine.
In a race to achieving herd immunity as a passport to economic recovery, around 50 countries have started vaccinating their people against Covid-19. Close to 950,000 people had received their jabs in the UK while around 2.8 million Americans have already been given their first dose of the Covid-19 jab. Germany has so far given the most injections, with more than 130,000 in five days. Other countries which have started their vaccine rollout include Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Kuwait, Malta, Mexico, Oman, Poland, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, and Belarus.
While the countries earlier mentioned have started inoculating their population with dispatch, the Philippine government through the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is taking its time through the bureaucratic red tape. FDA recently divulged that there is no authorized COVID-19 vaccine in the country yet. Instead of focusing its time and resources in speeding up the process of vaccine approvals, the said agency vowed that it would go after distributors of “illegal and unregistered” COVID-19 vaccines.
What took the FDA so long in the review process? If other countries have realized the urgency of the situation and have started vaccinating their people, Secretary of Health Francisco Duque III is still suffering from analysisparalysis syndrome when he expressed doubts over the vaccines produced under new approaches to vaccine production.
In those countries whose vaccination programs have started to roll out, politics is giving way to science, while their leaders have acknowledged the extreme urgency to allow the scientific solution to the pandemic to take its course at full speed. The contrary is happening in the Philippines. Patronage politics takes precedence over common good. The recent admission by President Duterte himself that Presidential Security Group (PSG) Personnel, with the help of their medical team, were already inoculated with two doses of vaccines as early as September of last year. The greatest irony is that here is the FDA and the DOH taking the luxury of time in approving vaccine candidates and threatening to apprehend distributors of “illegal and unregistered” vaccineswhile people close to the President and even some cabinet members have already enjoyed the immunity from COVID-19.
How many other privileged few have been vaccinated? For FDA Director-General Eric Domingo, there is nothing we can do about it, it’s personal choice. Tell it to the marines, Mr. Domingo. We were not born yesterday!
With the kind of leadership that the country has, the high optimism among Filipinos is bordering on an illusion or a wishful thinking. To our leaders who have taken advantage of their position to get the vaccine ahead of the many, we hope you get the immunity from the dreaded disease. But this immunity does not shield you from your accountability to the people you serve, and to God when judgment comes.