I have been in bed with the stomach flu for the last two days (probably food poisoning, since the dog was also vomiting). I wasn't too sick but the anti nausea and anti diarrhea medicine makes me sleep all day.
Today I am better.
In other news: The church that meets in our meeting room has again been given permission to use the room, as long as they notify Kuya for when they plan meetings outside of the Sunday schedule.
Joy and Kuya continue to be busy with the rice harvest/selling rice business.
We are again in strict shutdown: most of the province is covid free but we had a few cases so back to the masks etc.
the politization of the vaccine is not good: (so Pfizer won't attend the WH summit trying to publicize the plan to vaccinate and maybe get the very politicized CDC to actually bother to review the results in a timely matter, because exactly why? And don't get me started on the political shennanigans behind the delayed stimulus package, which came down to give money to leftist causes or no money for ordinary folks, and anyway, delaying the help will harm Trumpieboy).
the problem of course is that a lot of this fake antivax scepticism translates to being seen as facts> so only one third of Pinoys plan to get the vaccine, and another one third might get it, according to the Inquirer. WTF?
but it might not be just the political stuff: Lots of rumors in the anti vax internet about the mRNA vaccine might cause infertility. (they argue Bill Gates wants to lower the population and hey, why not use a vaccine to do this?).
This is, of course, a variation of the "tetanus/measles/ etc vaccines contain HCG to make you miscarry" hoax that has been going on at least since the early 1990s.
Ah, but not all the vaccines are mRNA based. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccine use this new technology, whereas the Oxford and Russian vaccine just put the antigen on cold viruses (the Oxford vaccine onto a Chimpanzee virus, the Russian vaccine used a human cold virus) to make the vaccine the old fashioned way.
so do you chose the fancy new technology that might have long term side effects from a new way to invoke immunity, or do you want to risk the old fashioned way and risk the mutation of an cold virus?
and since the mRNA vaccine requires very very cold storage, one could argue that for poorer countries the old fashioned vaccines should be used.
but it gets more complicated than that: China has 3 vaccines, including one that uses mRNA technology. I'll have to google when I have more time about more information on their program, which has already given the vaccine to one million people (because as I have noted before, the hysteria of side effects is less in poorer countries: hey, a few dead from vaccine is better than dead from the disease or from hunger related deaths due to shutting the economy)
The Chinese are seeking to sell their vaccine to the Philippines, but as this article notes: the company pushing the vaccine has used bribery in the past to push their products or to influence officials to approve of their stuff.
Given the suspicion that the Dengue Vaccine debacle was partly due to gifting people to allow this (then) unproven vaccine be given out here, the suspicion of any new vaccine is high, especially one from China, whose reputation in selling fake and low potency counterfeit drugs is notorious.
My solution? Give the vaccine to us who are at high risk: i.e. elders, the chronically ill, and the high risk professions e.g. health care and food workers.
Yes I'd take it: as for side effects? Well, I got severe side effects from other vaccines (especially typhoid vaccine, which put me in bed for 48 hours) so yes I figure I'd get side effects: but as a doc, I have seen the actual diseases (and seen people die of measles, typhoid, whooping cough, tetanus and influenza) and figure it's worth the risk.
If young women fearing infertility don't want to take it, no problem. Ditto for kids.
And indeed, that will probably be the plan here, since there isn't enough money or available vaccine for everyone.
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