Delayed jabs

My best friend has been bugging me to talk to her mom. She wouldn't sign up for any of the vaccination programs in whatever local government unit because she doesn't want to get vaccinated. Their conversations over video chats would consist of her rebutting the mother about nanotechnology and the efficiency of the vaccines. I declined, of course, I couldn't just push someone to believe in one thing which she feels so strongly about. The sad story is there are a lot of them who have the same sentiment.

I actually don't know who to blame. The detractors of the vaccines? The die-hard believers that this is all a conspiracy? Or those who simply do not have media literacy at all? Whatever reason they have for thinking that this is just a game, I feel sorry for them too. In a hospital drama, a patient who was diagnosed with COVID refused all treatment saying that it was only the hospital's way of earning money. That patient ended up in the operating room and inside the critical care unit to be intubated. This may be fiction, but it could be true and may be happening in several hospital rooms across the globe. This pandemic is real, I can't stress this hard enough.

That is why we need to get ourselves vaccinated to achieve their goal of herd immunity. However, the issue now has moved on past hesitancy but of supply shortage. Second doses that were supposed to be scheduled two or three weeks after the first one are postponed to a later date. Although the World Health Organization has said that the delay is acceptable, it leads to a lot of questions about the vaccination program which are difficult to answer.

Was there something wrong with the procurement? Is the projection of the number of people to be vaccinated wrong? What caused the delay? Should there be a delay? Then again, we operate on a kind of governance where what they say to the public is carefully chosen. Only words that don’t have spite against them are said, even if they have to bend the truth. I don't know how long we can live like that. Maybe a year more and then we can finally say we have survived this regime.

The private sector which has also helped in the vaccine rollout are now closing their doors by the end of the month. They are banking on the LGUs supposed haste to ramp up their program, as this is their primary duty. Will the LGUs be overwhelmed? Most especially now that everyone is rushing to get their jabs. Heck, everybody wants to qualify themselves as part of the A4 priority group. Even my students want to fall in line. It is nothing but a beautiful mess.

We want vaccination numbers up, but to those who really belong to the priority groups. We hope for the COVID cases to go down. There is no place to turn around.