Ricardo Saludo
BEFORE the headline topic, a word on President Rodrigo Duterte’s revocation of his order to terminate the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).
Just as his move to end VFA was provoked by a specific action of the United States government, the denial of an entry visa for Sen. Roland dela Rosa, another act of the US also led to the decision to continue the pact: the donation of millions of vaccines by America.
But what President Rodrigo Duterte established lasts far longer than a senator’s travel inconvenience or the need to immunize against coronavirus disease 2019, or Covid-19.
By ordering VFA’s termination, then recalling his command, the President made it clear that the Philippines will act in its own interest and prerogative in dealing with foreign nations, even superpowers.
Critics contend that President Duterte plays tough with America, but kowtows to China. In fact, keeping the VFA is the act that China opposes the most, even though it says nothing about it.
Letting US forces enter our country, including warships and planes able to nuke China from the Philippines and interdict its shipping, constitutes a paramount security threat to Beijing.
The threat posed by US forces allowed into the Philippines by VFA is far greater than the aborted stationing of Russian missiles in Cuba in 1962, which nearly brought the US and what was then the Soviet Union to nuclear war.
The Soviet projectiles to be positioned in Cuba then, in response to American rockets set up in Turkey, were minuscule in destructive power compared with the carnage and conflagration that even just one missile-packing US ship or sub can wreak on China, with the many cruise missiles and multi-warhead projectiles it can launch, each one with several times the thermonuclear force of all the Cuba-bound Soviet rockets.
But despite his praise and gratitude to China for several million Sinovac jabs given to the country, President Duterte still recalled his order to end the VFA, allowing more visits by the nuclear-armed US Seventh Fleet.
And that’s because it is in our interest, especially in our dealings with China, that we can ratchet up US military deployment hereabouts, even as President Duterte has rightly stalled the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), agreed under the VFA, which would turn our archipelago into America’s military platform against China.
So, VFA to keep China at bay, but no EDCA to keep our country out of Chinese missile sights. That’s independent foreign and security policy.
The herd immunity illusion
Turning to the headline topic, not a few experts have pointed out that herd immunity is not possible even with mass vaccination because none of the vaccines protect against infection 100 percent. Nor are Covid survivors totally immune from reinfection the way people who have had measles or mumps are (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00728-2).
Plus: vaccines are even less effective against more infectious and antibody-resistant variants of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causing Covid, like the Delta mutation now becoming dominant across the planet.
Indeed, a US study has found that with Delta-infected patients, the viral load or amount of virus in the blood is the same for both vaccinated and unvaccinated cases (https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210803/Unvaccinated-and-vaccinated-have-similar-viral-load-in-communities-high-in-SARS-CoV-2-delta.aspx). That means vaccines would not make people infected with Delta less infectious.
So, this target of jabbing 70 percent of Filipinos, which some raise to 85 percent, may be worthwhile, if only to drastically lower the risk of grave illness and death, as vaccines have been proved to do.
But it won’t zero the risk of surges, as widely vaccinated nations like America and Britain have found out. Rather, it’s still wise to wear masks and avoid crowded and enclosed places, even for the vaccinated.
And with vaccines sure to take many more months before they reach most of the global population, masks, shields and distancing remain the best way to stop Covid,
Indeed, masks alone can slash infection risk by over 80 percent, falling to 3.1 percent for those wearing masks, from 17.4 percent for the unmasked (https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/face-masks-reduce-risk-of-covid-19-infection-but-should-be-used-with-other-interventions/).
That’s as much or more protection than most vaccines can provide, though health protocols cannot spare those infected from grave illness and death, as jabs can.
Hence, the main use for vaccination is population protection, to give people an abundance of antibodies, so if they get Covid, they are far less likely to be hospitalized or killed.
In a Rappler feature, former health secretary Manuel Dayrit, who led the nation’s successful campaign against the 2003 SARS contagion, said of the vaccination effort: “We’re doing quite well. They’re reaching half a million jabs a day, maybe even 600,000. And hopefully, we can aim for 700,000 jabs per day and if we’re able to do that, we’re going to achieve 70 percent in NCR Plus by the end of the year.”
He added: “The silver lining for the Philippines and Indonesia is that yes, we have a lot of casualties, but because a lot of people got infected, natural immunity went up, and with vaccination coming in, we’re probably getting our vaccination levels in the population higher.”
For now and several more months, however, people by the thousands are still gasping for breath in hospitals or dying in intensive care units or at home.
For them, vaccines are too late. Indeed, one wonders whether the global pharmaceuticals industry and even world health authorities have given inadequate attention, effort, and resources to medication and treatment for the Covid-infected.
After all, while the market for vaccines runs into several billion people, those actually sick and needing medication number in the millions. Guess which one would be more lucrative for drugmakers to expend research budgets on.
No need to guess: This year US-based Pfizer projects $33.5 billion in Covid vaccine revenues. Its R&D partner, BioNTech of Germany, will become one of the largest pharmaceutical companies, with $18.7 billion in projected jab sales this year.
Meanwhile, we hear little about remedies, except those disparaged by health authorities. Next Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021, let’s talk about curing Covid.