THE United States of America will start its vaccination this week after their Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of vaccines developed by the combined force of Pfizer and BioNtech. The US is the latest to approve the use of vaccine after determining the urgency of its use and determining the efficacy with no adverse effects to the recipients.
The United Kingdom started ahead of using the same vaccine. Other countries like Canada and Saudi Arabia have also given the signal to use this vaccine to their people.
In the local setting, we seem to look at these developments as news that would not actually reach us soon. Yet we can see how countries would decide hastily on a vaccine that supposedly will be created in years and not months. We could assume that everything had also been considered including the role of their health experts and the urgency of the situation. The leaders of these countries knew that they deal with life and they cannot add more to the growing number of deaths.
For now, while we wait for our government to complete the negotiations with the manufacturers of the vaccine, we are left uncertain about our time. This means we can still expect that many of our people could be infected and deaths could come at anybody regardless of age.
What we can do is to keep a reminder to ourselves that the coronavirus is still around and we have a role to end up surviving this pandemic. So while the vaccines are not yet available, to think about the health protocols is the least that we can do. But our people should not be left with hanging options about their ways to survive this pandemic. That is the reason why we have a government because it undertakes the very role of an institution for the people. Our collective response should always be proactive and not passive.
The next is to ensure that the vaccine is safe and that the stigma of using this in the past would not haunt us this time. We need the government assurance that above all, we are solving a problem and not adding to it.
I was surprised to hear about the passing of our friend Butch Ebreo. When I was the chairman of the Alay Lakad, I used to work with Sir Butch. He was then the representative of city government along with other members of different committees. He was very cooperative in our programs for the youth.
There are also times when he would visit me at the Capitol to ask me about some of his activities. His son, Carlo, is also my childhood friend.
This is another example of our continued struggle in fighting the coronavirus. Though we have the heart to keep fighting, we cannot ignore the fact that we have friends and relatives who may be victims in the future.
Because the virus is an unseen enemy, we also cannot be assured that we could be spared. We are breathing on temporary relief, yet, there is still a threat that we have to face every day of our lives.*