Get the facts, not fake news

Times change. There was a time when the Chinese and Filipinos worked together in trade and commerce even before Western colonization. All the symbols of this cooperation can be found underground with diggings of Chinese artifacts. Filipinos did business trading silk materials through the galleon trade. So they were friends and intermarried. Many Filipinos have Chinese ancestors and carried the Chinese names up to this generation. Our national hero, Jose Rizal, is one. We should keep in mind this background instead of being bullied by Western colonizers into believing black propaganda into a new cold war.

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a contest on who gives more help to the Philippines in the world crisis. Here are the facts seldom talked or written about.

As promised, the Philippines received the second batch of China of 400,000 more vaccines, following an oversubscription for the 600,000 doses previously donated by China on Feb. 28. It is this donation from China that rolled out the vaccine program for the Philippines.

Many friends who shunned the Chinese vaccines are now asking how they can secure shots for themselves.

Critics of the Duterte administration lead the chorus of fake news led by Vice President and opposition Senators Hontiveros, Pangilinan, Lacson, ex-Justice Carpio. They questioned the China vaccine and continue to sow fear and confusion in the public when over 500,000 Filipino frontliners have been vaccinated.

But we still have mountains to climb before we can celebrate. We need a whole of nation approach, the cry of General Luna – “bayan muna bago sarili” – rings louder!

It was good to see our top Filipino doctors – including PGH Director Gerardo “Gap” Legaspi, St. Luke’s president Dr. Arturo dela Peña (also a COVID survivor), FDA director Eric Domingo, Chinese General medical director Dr. Samuel Ang – leading the way. We really should learn to listen to the right experts, not only to lying politicians.

While the critics were demonizing Duterte’s seeming preference for the China vaccine, other global health ministers, national leaders from Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil, UAE, among other countries, including royal families and 80-year-old Pele and more than 70 million people worldwide have received their shots of the China vaccine.

The biased naysayers hinder the Philippine recovery. They do not say that it is the richer Western countries who have hoarded the vaccine supplies more than what their populations need. Many Filipinos also don’t know that Sinovac has been in the Philippines since 2009, providing effective and affordable anti-rabies, anti-tetanus, flu vaccines to Filipinos with its Filipino partner IP-Biotech that has formed a coalition of biotech and pharmaceutical experts led by Filipinos, as revealed by think-tank Integrated Development Studies Institute.

Lianhua Qingwen was approved in Singapore, Canada, Thailand and of course China and Hong Kong, among a dozen or so countries since May 2020, but it took our FDA until August to approve it, but only if prescribed by a specialist, while the other countries made it over-the-counter!

President Duterte’s independent foreign policy and hard work of our Philippines and China diplomats made possible “more than 70 flights, including Philippine Air Force planes, have been allowed by Chinese authorities to land in China to pick up such medical supplies for the Philippines,” reported Ambassador Chito Sta. Romana.

Ambassador Chito also noted that China prioritizing the Philippines is a direct result of President Duterte’s call to President Xi Jinping last June 2020 requesting for the Philippines to be included in China’s priority list. We must remember China has 1.4 billion people and dozens of countries are also rushing to secure supplies from China.

Yet as early as  May 2020, Xi Jinping announced to the world that China will make the vaccine a public good and has since donated vaccines to more than 50 poor countries. The 1 million donated vaccines from China is on top of the donated over a billion pesos worth of medical supplies and other assistance to help our Filipino frontliners in the early months of the pandemic when help was scarce. Latest news is China-led AIIB just approved the loan of $300 million for the Philippines’ vaccine budget.

It was also Chinese supplies that dramatically lowered the prices of face masks and face shields that skyrocketed to more than a hundred pesos in the early months of the pandemic... now face masks go as low as P2 and face shields even at P8!

In contrast, the US was caught pirating medical supplies and nurses even from allies in the early months of the pandemic. Now it has cornered over a quarter of the global vaccine supplies, more than what its population needs and has vowed to protect the profits of their pharmaceutical companies. Recently, Pfizer was reported to require sovereign guarantees and even military bases in exchange for vaccines and forcing other countries to extend a blanket liability waiver even if the problems are due to Pfizer’s own negligence.

This is all part of the “propaganda war,” but the story was reported by news network from allies of the US like Germany and India. China does not play the demonizing game. How can the Philippines expect to get allocations from the US when Biden’s White House on March 1 said that the US will not share vaccines with Canada and Mexico until all Americans are inoculated. After getting criticized, US announced later that it will allow AstraZenenca vaccines to be delivered to Canada and Mexico, which is approved in the two countries, but not in the US, interestingly.

EU has also said it is “not ready” to supply poorer countries, while securing multiple times more than what their population needs.

Ironically, the pandemic is revealing how hollow the words of those who claim to champion democracy and human rights are, forgetting that for this pandemic, no one is safe until everyone is safe!