THE PRONOUNCEMENTS of Sen. Imee Marcos are not always met with universal approval. A recent comment which exhorted us all to forget the past and to “move on” was received by the populace in generally unfavorable terms. The Marcos era is already part of our history and will remain for ever. To use another crass but current phrase, she needs to “get used to it”.
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Nevertheless, her analysis printed in PN last week about the COVID-19 pandemic gave much food for thought. Her critique of the “herd immunity” concept is valid. We cannot talk sensibly about herd immunity when we have a regrettably low vaccination rate of 13 percent.
Many individual towns and barangays are proactively encouraging residents to take the second jab. For example, we salute Barangay Taculing, Bacolod City that have telephoned family members to arrange appointments for the necessary jab. This is a welcome change to other contexts (not connected to COVID vaccinations) where the public does not always find it easy to obtain the service they are seeking.
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As far as I know, there has been no pandemic like COVID for doing so much damage to so many people irrespective of their location.
Some other diseases which existed in a fairly mild form in one part of the world, suddenly became highly destructive in another. Smallpox, for instance, was well known to medieval Europe without being the worst scourge of its kind. Yet on reaching the Americas it wreaked unparalleled havoc, virtually annihilating the Aztec civilization, decimating the native Americans and turning 20 percent of mankind into three percent.
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The history of epidemics is long. I fear that COVID-19 will be with us for many years. The management of the pandemic has been blighted by many, including politicians, who believe that the disease will be on its way out by 2023.
History is not on side with this optimistic scenario. Malaria has been chronic. Alexander the Great was killed by it in 323BC. Twenty-three centuries later it is still killing people, steadily and ceaselessly. As a disease, malaria has caused the greatest harm to the greatest number.
It is regrettable that rich countries have used their wealth to establish greater quantities of vaccine than is available to developing countries.
I hope that there will soon be greater equality of an available effective vaccine so that, at the end of the day, no country loses more than approximately two percent of its population to the scourge./PN
