There is so much uproar over several mayors jumping the line to have themselves vaccinated at a time when the priority for the first vaccine rollout was for health workers. This is not in defense of the mayors as they can ably defend themselves, but I do not see why mayors are not classified as frontliners in the same category as health workers when they are as much up front against COVID as are doctors, nurses, medtechs, and the like.
In fact, while they do not deal directly with COVID patients, mayors, at least the working hands-on ones, expose themselves to the risk of COVID infection far longer and in more places. Unlike health workers who work for certain periods and at clearly-defined places, mayors are mayors 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the length and breadth of their jurisdictions.
If they jump the line, it does not have to necessarily mean they are pulling rank or something. The way I would look at it, it is because they urgently need the protection for the kind of work that they do. Mayors are leaders. At no time is the need to keep leaders safe than at this time when almost no rules seem to apply in the fight against an unseen enemy, a fight that no one has ever had the experience of fighting.
In such a touch-and-go situation, we cannot afford to be leaderless. In such a chaotic mess, there is only one voice we need to hear, and it is that of our leader, in this case the mayors. We cannot afford to lose a significant number of mayors, especially when there is something that can be done to provide them protection.
Vaccines intended for health workers are not shipped to their destinations in exact numbers. That is not how such things work. There is always room for a little allowance, a little extra for exigencies. To me it is all right for mayors to jump priority lines to be vaccinated, for as long as the jumping is limited to their own selves, no kapamilya, no kapuso, no kainuman.
In fact mayors are way below the pecking order of leaders who ought to be acknowledged as being just as indispensable as health workers in this terrible fight we are engaged in. There are others with even greater importance and heavier responsibilities. Foremost among these is no less than the president and it mystifies me no end that President Duterte has not had his jab this late in the day.
If Duterte has had his vaccine and is just not telling, well and good. It is his safety that matters, not the secrecy, for there is no greater frontliner than the president. But if he has not been inoculated, then I would say that is pretty irresponsible of the president to remain at risk of contracting COVID, especially if it is just for the sake of political appearances.
This is no time to change horses in midstream. A functioning line of succession is small comfort in a pandemic. We cannot lose a step or miss a beat to try and see if the vice president can hit the ground running in case the president is lost to COVID. Wait and see or trial by error have no place in a pandemic-rapped society. We need the way to be clear, the marching orders unambiguous. Leaders and frontliners are synonymous.