‘No bakuna, no ayuda’

LETTERS FROM THE AGNO

March Fianza

When it comes to navigating unvaccinated people to vaccination sites similar to steering cows into a corral, we do not lack talent. Opening several vaccination sites 24/7 according to a Manila mayor before the scheduled enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) lockdown on August 6 not only magnetized qualified vaccinees, it saved the vaccines that were about to expire.

    The timing was certainly good because LGU officials and health authorities in the NCR + 8 area were seeing that the infections suspiciously due to the Covid-19 Delta variant was increasing exponentially. First, it swept rapidly through India and the United Kingdom before it spread in all 50 states in the U.S.A. where it is now the predominant variant.

    Another Manila mayor was happy to be interviewed as he announced that the vaccination sites where his constituents crowded to get jabbed could be the most convenient place to distribute social amelioration funds (SAF) of P1,000 per individual after showing his or her vaccination card. That was how it played in mind that the “no bakuna-no ayuda” system could have been pre-planned by the NCR mayors.

    By the way, for personal pleasure, I renamed the highly contagious SARS-CoV-2 virus strain that was first seen in India in December, the “Delta Air”. No, it is not the big and flashy American airplane that lands at the Manila runway. It is more like your silent fart that passes without much notice but is very deadly. If one can smell cigarette smoke from a distance of 20-25 feet, that is how the Delta variant is very contagious, one scientist said.   

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) described Delta as more transmissible than the common cold and influenza, as well as the viruses that cause smallpox, MERS, SARS, and Ebola, and as contagious as chickenpox.

    Health officials have been consistent in reporting to the public that the highest spread of cases and severe outcomes are happening in places with low vaccination rates, and that latest reports confirmed that hospitalizations and deaths have been among the unvaccinated.

    Delta is more contagious than the other virus strains and it is quickly spreading. Medicine epidemiologists in the U.S. believe that Delta will accelerate the pandemic, showing estimates that by the end of July, Delta was the cause of more than 80% of new U.S. COVID-19 cases.

    Although, the W.H.O. and our own DOH said that vaccinated people also can transmit Delta, this was not the case with other variants. This made health agencies promptly decide to revise or return its masking guidelines for all, including the vaccinated.

    If you ask health officials how fast “Delta Air” will spread and how many people will get the infection, they will not know. But the answers, according to research scientists, depend on where you live and how many people in your area were vaccinated. This means, the “Delta Air” can hop, skip and jump from one poorly vaccinated location to another because it is in the air.