Order of vaccination must be strictly enforced

By Al S. Mendoza

 

BREAKING NEWS:  LeBron James has signed for a two-year pact worth $85 million with the Los Angeles Lakers, the team he had just powered to the NBA championship past the Miami Heat.  That deal is roughly P4.5 billion!  How many 35-year-olds like James—he turns 36 on Dec. 30—could close out such a gargantuan contract? No wonder our very own Kai Sotto is aiming for an NBA (National Basketball Association) stint this early.  He’s now playing in the NBA farm league, hoping to crash soon into the world’s No. 1 basketball league.  Well, at 7-foot-2, Sotto might yet make it.  Aside from his height that’s tailor-fit for NBA play, Sotto is not yet 20 years old, which makes him even more saleable.  Let’s pray for Kai.  His success is also the success of Philippine basketball.

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THE vaccine race is on.

It’s a given that First World countries like the U.S., England, Russia and China, among others, are spearheading the search to find the cure for the COVID-19.

They have the facilities for it.

They have the logistics for it.

They have the scientists for it.

Well, we may have the scientists, too.

But, alas, we don’t have the wherewithal aka money for it.

The facilities for tests are indispensable cogs but to have them, you need an enormous amount.

Sadly, Third World countries like us are stymied by poverty and a sore lack of resources to finance such sky-high costs of vaccine experimentation.

Surprise, surprise, but not even our 2021 national budget of P4.5 trillion may not be enough to finance tests to discover the antidote against the virus that sprang from Wuhan, China, on December 17, 2019.

Only progressive economies like the U.S. and other countries from the First World can allot a fortune in search of the cure to save mankind from this deadly infection outbreak.

And, if the news is true, the United Kingdom appears to be the first country to administer the first vaccine to its citizens.

And who will be the first to be inoculated—hopefully before Christmas Day this year?

As per earlier pronouncements by the world’s medical experts, the first vaccine recipients would be the front liners, such as the doctors, nurses and all the other medical warriors directly in touch with and taking care of infected patients.

Just right.

Next would be our law enforcers like the police and the military.  Makes sense, too.

Let’s pray to dear God everything goes well in the United Kingdom’s initial vaccine foray so that the rest of the world could follow suit, sooner than expected.

The list goes on and on, down the line, in the beeline for vaccination.

Next would be our kids and our elderlies that are the more vulnerable than the rest of us, our farmers that bring food on the table, our workers that sustain the economy, our students that hold the future, and the masses of our Filipino people that carry half of the nation’s load.

But lest we make a blunder of major magnitude, let’s put the politicians last in the queue.

No argument there, please?

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