First vaccinees as test bunnies

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo I do not like to use the words guinea pigs because they are off putting, so how about test bunnies? These words are used in the context of lab experiments. I am using test bunnies to refer to t Ihe first Filipino vaccinees. Not that they are being primed to be test bunnies. But by being first, they will show one and all the immediate and short-term side effects, if there be some at all, of the anti-COVID-19 vaccines.  The long-term effect that we expect would be immunity from the...

Read More

Book review: ‘Promise Me, Dad’ by Joe Biden

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo I read in one sitting “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship and Purpose” (2017) by then U.S. Vice President Joe Biden who, any moment now, would be sworn in as President of the world’s most powerful nation. “Promise me, Dad, that you’re going to be all right” were words of Beau, Biden’s eldest son, to his father. Beau died of glioblastoma or cancer of the brain in 2015 at the age of 45....

Read More

FOTY runners-up Essential workers: The many faces of pandemic heroism

 FOTY RUNNERS-UPEssential workers: The many faces of pandemic heroismPhilippine Daily Inquirer / 05:40 AM January 17, 2021MANILA, Philippines — While health care frontliners focused mainly on COVID-19 patients seeking or receiving treatment in medical facilities, people from other sectors and fields also labored and risked their own well-being to keep the rest of the population alive, healthy and informed.Without them, families, groups...

Read More

2020 Filipinos of the Year: Health care frontliners

 2020 Filipinos of the Year: Health care frontlinersPhilippine Daily Inquirer / 05:42 AM January 17, 2021(Editor’s Note: Every year since 1991, the Philippine Daily Inquirer has sought to recognize the Filipino individual or group who, in the judgment of the newspaper’s editors, made the most positive impact on the life of the nation.) ILLUSTRATION BY RENE ELEVERAMasked and hooded, or covered from head to foot with protective suits,...

Read More

Government’s preference for China’s vaccine?

 Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo While listening to the senate hearing on the national government’s roundabout procurement of the vaccine against COVID-19, one was wont to exclaim in exasperation, “Napakasimpleng  bagay ginagawang kumplikado.” A simple thing made so complicated. Senators present (virtually and physically) wondered in unison why the cash-challenged national government would not allow the private sector and local governments units (LGUs) to procure, on their own, vaccines for their constituents...

Read More

Preferential options and other ruminations

Philippine Daily Inquirer/OPINION/by Ma. Ceres P. Doyo The phrase “preferential option for the poor” came out prominently in the 1970s as a result of the gathering of bishops of Latin America where so-called liberation theology supposedly began and took root. Hereabouts in Asia, it was the Federation of Asian Bishops Conferences that first pushed it although the spirit behind it is as old as the gospel that Jesus preached and embodied in the Catholic Church’s encyclicals and in social teachings in centuries past. It did not take long for the...

Read More