"We pray for deliverance."
"We pray for deliverance."Or has the title of this piece a case of speaking or writing so soon?
After midnight tomorrow, we will turn the page on 2020, which was the most difficult year, without question, that our nation and our people have suffered since World War II and the Japanese occupation. I was born after that war, and during the liberation, my grandfather was killed by retreating Japanese soldiers. The only memory I have of him are some black and white pictures and a big framed one kept in our ancestral house. And stories from my likewise dearly departed mother how great a cook my lolo was, apart from being an astute businessman.
2020 we will never forget. All 109 million of us, including those who have either migrated to other parts of the globe, or those who toil in other countries to feed their families back home. For that matter, but for some isolated parts which comprise less than a percentage of the world’s population, every other country will remember 2020 with much sadness at the very least, and with unspeakable loss for those whose loved ones succumbed to COVID-19.
So we look at the coming year with a great measure of hope.
I read an article sometime this month written in another paper by the highly respected Rene Saguisag, than any Mr. Clean one could hardly find in this land, who pined for a song usually sung during the season of grace but which millennials have neither sung nor even heard — Whispering Hope.
Will 2021 be one of hopes, whether shouted, prayed for, or whispered, finally fulfilled? Is deliverance from the coronavirus and all the suffering it has triggered, soon at hand as the new year unfolds? Or will we still be praying, and hoping, instead of thanking the good Lord and praising Him for his kindness and mercy, when the new year turns old and grey?
The saving grace, we are told, is the vaccine. And how at least 60 percent of our population gets to be inoculated twice by the vaccine shots.
Sixty or seventy million is not a small number. As has been written here in several recent articles, the mere distribution and vaccination of such a number is fraught with difficulties, both in terms of logistics and professional mobilization.
Sourcing the vaccine, and the proper one among a variety produced by different pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies from several countries of origin is another difficult problem.
The rich countries have beaten us to the sourcing. They advanced millions, even billions of dollars to known big pharma and reputable R and D biotechnologies to be able to lay first claim on their production. Not only because we are far from being rich, but because some of our officials were hemming and hawing and twiddling their thumbs from the beginning of this pandemic, do we now find ourselves scrounging.
If Sanofi Pasteur of France, in developing a vaccine called Dengvaxia for dengue has become unworthy of the public trust and confidence, how shall we gauge the public trust upon a vaccine called Sputnik from Putin, or a Sinovac from Xi? That will take some doing.
Some “lucky” persons have had first crack at a Sinopharma vaccine from the Middle Kingdom which our Food and Drug Administration has yet to certify. They took the shots likely because they were told the Politburo and the soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army had been given the shots.
But are we getting Sinopharma? Or shall we settle for the reportedly half-effective Sinovac, which some of our senators say, is more expensive than Pfizer’s (despite its -70 degree Celsius consistent temperature requirement), or Moderna’s, or AstraZeneca, or whatever else there may be in the world? To borrow a favorite term from the beleaguered, befuddled and perhaps bothered secretary of health, what shall be the “gold standard” of efficacy? 70%, 90%, 95% ? Or is 50% good enough for our unfortunate kababayans?
Getting the public to trust whichever vaccine will be rolled out in this country will require not only assuring and credible communication, from the message box to the skill of the communicators. Certainly much more than what the presidential spokesman can churn.
At one point, our vaccine czar, Sec. Carlito Galvez, whose credibility is thankfully intact, was honest enough to state that with our capabilities, we can only inoculate 20 million people next year. But then again, whispering hope tells us that by the third quarter of next year, several other vaccines may have been developed, and access to the same may be within reach of a benighted land such as ours.
As we close this year of which little good can be attributed, and even as we thank the good Lord among those of us spared of the pandemic, we can only pray that deliverance or even at least, an easing of the contagion, will come upon us in 2021.
And so, to all those who read us, and to every other fellow traveler in this life, may I wish all the best for the coming year. And thank you, Father God, for many, many years of happiness and a loving family.