‘We cannot win this battle against COVID on paper in briefings being given in the bunker called Malacanang, if in reality we are losing it above ground.’
LAST month, I received snapshots of a presentation made I think to the President by those in charge of our vaccine program, which should be “vaccine czar” Carlito Galvez, a retired general. The snapshots carried the logos of PTV 4 and the Presidential Communications Office and looked legitimate to me.
The presentation, for sure, was part of the “whole of nation” approach, a phrase that must have been coined by a highly-paid consultant, to be bandied about by the different “czars” whenever they give media briefings. What exactly they mean I don’t know because I haven’t seen a “whole of nation” recovery from the pandemic and its economic impact. So this beautiful but meaningless term could have been “superkalifragelisticexpialidocious” and at least we could have been singing along.
Now part of this “whole of nation” approach was a presentation on the vaccination plan.
What were its elements?
The first slide reported that for Q1 some 1,105,500 vaccines have been deployed. That 369,149 health care workers have been vaccinated at least once. And that we had the following remaining doses: March 24- 400,000 Sinovac; March 24-26: 979,200 Astra Zeneca; March 29: 1,000,000 Sinovac for a total of 2, 379,200. I suppose the dates meant the dates they were expected to arrive?
From this first slide I already notice a number of things: 1,105,500 doses are good for 550,000 persons where each person gets two jabs. Add the 2,379,200 which would be good for some 1,600,000 people and you’d have a little over 2,100,000 people fully vaccinated by the doses we have. But what is our target for herd immunity? That’s 70,000,000. If we took one quarter to jab 2.1M then we would need 35 quarters to get to 70M!
But wait: didn’t 500,000 Sinovac doses arrive recently? The numbers above state 400,000 for March 24 and another 1,000,000 for March 29. So does this mean we are in fact short, at least of Sinovac?
If we are short for the projections for Quarter One, how reliable then are the projections for Quarter Two onwards? This is what the slide says: April deliveries include some 1.5M to 2M of Sinovac, 3M of the Russian Gamaleya vaccine, and 1M of COVAX for a total of 5.5M. Its April 19 now — how realistic are these numbers?
For May the government targeted receiving 8.9M doses: for June, 11.5M; for July 13.5M and then it targets to receive 20M doses per months from August to December for a total of 140 million doses. Wow. Impressive “whole of nation approach.”
But are they real?
The report also says the government targets vaccinating 500,000 to 1 million people per week for April and May, and 1-2M a week for June-July. Again, it’s April 19. Are we indeed hitting 500,000 a week? Or 100,000 from Monday to Friday? Or are we in fact falling far, far short of these numbers?
I will stop short of calling this “whole of nation” approach one massive fraud, but you tell me. On paper, we are winning the battle, thanks to our “czars,” plus that “Duke of Hazard” in the Department of Health.
But on the ground?
Reminds me of Adolf Hitler in his bunker in Berlin in March of 1945, where he was cut off from all reality. As his Thousand Year Reich was collapsing above ground, in the bunker Hitler was ordering Wehrmacht and Panzer divisions deployed to stop the Allied forces — divisions which existed only on paper.
Not even Hitler’s suicide could make up for the damage inflicted on his nation, one whose scars still remain painful 70 years later.
We cannot win this battle against COVID on paper in briefings being given in the bunker called Malacanang, if in reality we are losing it above ground.
You could call for a truce with opposing armies; there’s no such thing with a virus.
You either beat it – or it beats you.
