Tragic ironies

I WAS scanning for something to watch on the television on Sunday when I chanced on a news report on CNN. It was about a Roman Catholic group’s early morning protest dubbed “Walk of Life.”

It ended its report on the event with a video clip of Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas’s sermon on Sunday. In it, he rhetorically asked when will the people start to make a stand against sin, when bishops will start to get killed one by one?

“Kailan kayo magagalit sa kasalanan? Kung ako ay papatayin, magagalit na ba kayo sa kasalanan?” he asked his flocked.

That bit didn’t get to me. What did get to me was the expression on the faces of his flock when the camera panned to the audience as Villegas was speaking.

Blank stares. I could almost hear an imaginary director shout: Cue in sound effects of crickets and roll down the tumbleweeds!

You see, I’ve had an encounter of sorts with this archbishop when I worked in Quezon City years back.

I was participating in a multisectoral protest action against the ratification of the Cyber Crime Prevention law that would be signed into law by the then President Benigno Simeon Aquino III on Sept. 12, 2012. Organizers told protesters to gather at the Edsa Shrine since it was also the anniversary of the Feb. 25 People Power Revolt.

However, when we arrived at the venue we were repelled by a phalanx of anti-riot police of the QCPD. We demanded to talk to their ranking officer.

Much to our surprise when the ranking officer showed us a memorandum issued by Villegas banning any political protest actions at the Edsa Shrine because it would disrupt those who are praying inside the chapel of the shrine.

Without batting an eyelash, the officer told the organizers that they were just following the order of Villegas because the shrine is a private property of the Roman Catholic church.

We were stunned.

We were protesting against a sin. A law that would curtail the citizens’ right to express and for an independent press.

Witnessing events coming to a full circle, to me, is sort of closure in the most tragic way, I must say. Such tragic ironies like the fencing of the Press Freedom monument in Cagayan de Oro.

Will Villegas now permit the people to congregate at the Edsa Shrine to protest against what he called sin because the Roman Catholic Church is now at the other end of persecution?

Will he repeal his standing order to the police this coming Feb. 25 and let the people protest at the shrine?

Measles outbreak

AT 21 years old, I was a relatively young parent. But at that age, I already knew vaccinations are critical to newborns and onwards with booster shots. I never once harbored the thought that vaccinations could be a medical racket or just a way for the doctor to bill you some more.

Of course, it helped that my mother was a nurse. Let me reiterate that she was a government nurse, connected with the Department of Health. She explained the importance of vaccinations to us early.

That’s why I’m appalled at the news of a measles outbreak, first, in the National Capital Region, then as the weekend winded to a close, the other parts of the country followed.

In its latest bulletin, Reliefweb.int noted that cases of measles in the Philippines have been increasing over the past several years. There have been outbreaks, but they have been mainly isolated, the group added. Reliefweb.int is a humanitarian information source on the Internet that specializes in digital service for the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha).

“On 6 February 2019, the Department of Health (DOH) declared a “measles outbreak” in the National Capital Region (NCR) and Region 3 (Central Luzon). On the 7 February 2019, DOH announced that the measles outbreak had spread to more areas in Luzon and Visayas in Calabarzon, Region 6 (Western Visayas) and Region 7 (Central Visayas). Unconfirmed reports from DOH report around 72 deaths among more than 2,000 cases of measles nationwide,” the bulletin reads in part.

Diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus, polio, hepatitis B, and measles are all preventable diseases. Inoculation for diseases has been available in the Philippines since 1886, for crying out loud. It was brought to our shores in gratitude for erecting a statue of Spanish King Carlos IV in front of the Manila Cathedral in Intramuros. It was to be the first vaccination of Filipinos — it was for smallpox.

So, how do we deconstruct how these outbreaks happened? Don’t we have a national immunization program?

On Facebook, there have been a lot of theories. There’s the one blaming Public Attorney’s Office Persida Acosta for supposedly scaring parents against vaccinations by tweeting last year that “vaccines are bioweapons.” This was at the height of the Denvanxia brouhaha which was politicized to the hilt. As expected, many social media influencers of this administration jumped on it like flies to a turd.

It’s easy to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of Acosta. But that is equally lazy, too. I was tempted to blame her, by the way, as you can see in some of my Facebook posts.

However, if you look at the timeline of the outbreaks vis-a-vis the Denvanxia scare, you will see that it doesn’t entirely add up.

Reliefweb.int’s bulletin shows that from 2017 to 2018, measles cases rose across the country by as much as 550 percent above the normal average.

“Poor immunization coverage is broadly agreed by health specialists to be the root cause of the outbreak. The [World Health Organization] has reported that immunization rates were well below the target of 95 percent and decreasing,” Reliefweb.int’s bulletin reads.

I figure that there is so much blame to go around. Maybe we, parents should also look at ourselves. Yes, there was the crusading Acosta out to steer us back to the stone age. Yes, there is also the shortcomings of the health department, which could only do so much with the share of the national budget it has, year in and year out. But we, parents, should know better.

It is ironic that in this supposed information age, many of us still choose ignorance. I say, if the state doesn’t have free vaccinations in our part of the country then let’s buy the vaccines ourselves.

I don’t buy the we-are-poor excuse. My neighbors, here Consolacion, have a budget for betting for swertres, thrice a day. Most still, go about their day playing card games of tong-its, chikicha, and piyat-piyat. Don’t tell me you cannot spare for your child’s vaccination.

What I’m saying is that we can blame everybody else during any crises that come across our lives but we should not leave out ourselves. I’m not saying we should blame ourselves for this preventable medical crisis. I’m saying we should not be quick in blaming other people for the things that we could have done ourselves.

So, get off your behind and get your children vaccinated. There’s no conspiracy behind it. It has been a staple medical intervention for centuries. Pfft.