FOR months and weeks since the COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed by the World Health Organization in 2020, the world has been stormed with numbers and statistics as data and as basis for people around the world to understand the risks, threats and deadly impact of COVID-19. At the rate the…

THE discovery of the COVID-Beta variant in Mangaldan should serve as a wake-up call to provincial and local governments in Pangasinan. Our local governments must review and correct their established priorities in their campaign to flatten the curve. The discovery of the Beta variant, already considered a “concern” of the…

WINNING the first gold medal for the country by Olympian Hidilyn Diaz couldn’t have come at a better time. The country has been in the doldrums for months, coping with various stress being suffered by families caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The only seeming action-filled drama out there are news…

PERHAPS the tag “epicenter of COVID-19 contagion” assigned to a town and city did not mean much to mayors because it can’t possibly be appended to more than one town or city. Woe is the flavor of the month. The past week, the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management…

CAN a mere resolution of an ad hoc task force, specifically, the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of  Emerging Infectious Diseases, take precedence over, or override a regional trial court’s issued injunction? While no one questions the IATF’s authority to impose restrictions that promote health and safety protocols to…

NOT a few politicians promoting candidacies for presidential elections in 2022 have come and gone in Pangasinan to seek out new alliances in the province and discuss political strategies. They are of the same mold for the past 10 decades – all for self-serving personality politics. But one popular politician…

WE can say without fear of contradiction that Your PUNCH is the second surviving oldest community newspaper in Northern Luzon (next to Baguio Midland Courier in Baguio City) , and certainly one of the oldest in the country. When we say 65 years, we mean Your PUNCH has been documenting…

NOTHING can be more frustrating than to learn that after battling COVID-19, from months of uncertainties to later months of confidence knowing that “flattening of the curve” is possible with herd immunity, now comes the news that Delta, a much deadlier variant is threatening the world. After 14 months, more…

THE recent media offensive again launched by the political opposition using the war on drugs as a political issue to discredit the Duterte Administration is both detestable and deplorable. We dare say “by the opposition” instead of the International Criminal Court’s retiring chief prosecutor who issued the statement that it…

THE reported temporary suspension of inoculating Dagupeños with their first dose of the anti-COVID-19 vaccine didn’t really come as a surprise. It had to be expected, and should be expected to happen again in the weeks ahead, not only in the city but in all other vaccination sites in the…