I keep reading on the hysteria in western countries over covid, but here it seems to have disappeared.
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When I go outside, there are crowds everywhere in the Plaza and the outdoor markets.
Maybe today I'll go to the mall and see how it is there.
More importantly, they are no longer requiring a face shield in the bank. Hmm....
they are talking about reopening face to face school instructions: which is why our maid, who was originally anti vax, had her son get the vaccine: they are working class, and education is the only hope for them to get out of low level jobs (most of the family are maids, cooks, or drive tricycles).
this is being seens as due to herd immunity. The country was slow in starting to give out vaccines, but now is giving out shots like crazy even to older school kids and boosters to high risk folk, but still less than half the country has gotten shots.
The hysteria about the religious objection to vaccines isn't big here, maybe because the Pfizer vaccine was originally turned down and only started to be given out later in 2020.
There was, however, an editorial in the Inquirer from a Chinese spokesman insisting that the Sinovax did not use aborted cells in manufacturing, so it was okay for Catholics to use.
and as we know, China never lies about such things. (/s). Sinovax uses an inactivated virus, so maybe it is true. But of course, when this was written it only had a fifty percent protection rate, and that was before the newer variants popped up.
As a doc, I know that using 20 year old cell lines from aborted fetuses, i.e. tissue that otherwise would have been thrown out, is not a big deal, but has some ethical taint, so it would be better to use other sources of stem cells. In other words, the bishops etc should have objected years ago but they didn't. So why object now that people are dying?
most of the objections in the USA seem to be about the mRNA vaccines, and since most of our vaccines are not the pfizer one, it's not a problem.
But it does make one wonder if China is pushing the anti vax stuff in order to encourage countries to use their vaccine that gives weaker protection than western vaccines.
But now with new variants, all the vaccines have a similar problem, so the hysteria pushing the vaccine seems a bit over the top.
One other thing: There are stories of side effects of the mRNA vaccine, some of which would be horrific if true. I figure they are exaggerated.
But it brings up a point: In January 2021, the Philippines was offered a huge amount of the Pfizer vaccine, but the government official just didn't get around the paperwork to let them be free of liability, so the deal fell through and the vaccine was shipped instead to Singapore. At the time, I wondered why the gov't official was so lax in doing what seemed to me to be routine paperwork. But now that the side effect kerfuffle is out there, it makes me wonder. After the Dengue vaccine problems, the DOH officials are sensitive to vaccine side effects.
We know people who have died of covid, but none recently. So our town seems to be free of the virus. But now that there are all those stories of side effects in the US, I should note that we just haven't seen this. I only heard of one elderly person who had a heart attack a few days after the shot, but since we have quite a few heart attacks in the elderly due to diabetes or high blood pressure, I figure it was a coincidence.
so now the question is if the Philippines has herd immunity.
And another question: what will happen if the omnicrom hits us.
It is Christmas season and one does doubt that you will be able to scare folks into not partying if they don't see people sick.
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the low numbers of cases is not limited to the Philippines.
a similar low number of cases has been reported in Japan: 79 new cases yesterday. and one death.
India is down to under 6000 cases a day (out of a population of one billion). and about 200 dying each day of covid.
so the numbers sound impressive until they are put into the context of the ordinary death rate and population numbers.
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