Did I hear it right? The report said that 120 schools in the United States are holding face-to-face classes. Now that is relatively new term to describe the normal way of holding classes, but I do admire the administrators who are daring to do that, as well as the parents who allow their children to participate in such sessions. Schools there regularly start in September, so this must refer to a majority of the institutions, both public and private.
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Are they doing that with the approval of Health authorities, to say nothing about the school officials themselves? I believe this could be because cases of this highly infectious ailment are not as numerous or threatening as in other countries, like ours. But I do hope and pray that the international vaccination campaigns continue without let-up, and that they all do the job they are intended to do, which is to stop the pandemic in its tracks.
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Speaking of vaccinations, reports say that in the European Union, 70 percent of the people have, so far, already been vaccinated. I’m afraid I have not gotten any report yet about the statistics in our country, but I do hope we are also catching up. I hear also that vaccinations are going on in Bacolod 24 hours, and that is very encouraging. We thank our Health workers for their zeal and dedication to their work, rather, their vocation, which is truly admirable in these times!
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But let us pray for those people in other countries, even including the United States, where some facilities have become unavailable during these times, because of weather problems that have compounded them. In some of its biggest and most progressive cities, the United States has to deal with the problem of basic needs like gas, food and power not easily available at times. The problem has been worsened by a natural calamity called “IDA” that has created the crisis that one would not expect to be big problem for that country!
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I have heard some reports that there are still people in our province and city, and possibly in the whole of our country, who still refuse to undergo vaccination, for some reason or other. Others claim to have heard adverse reports about them, others for superstitious reasons. I hope the authorities will be able to convince them with statistics on the number spared by this pandemic because they had undergone the best preventive for it, which is vaccination. Isn’t it sad to think that, in this day and age, we still have people who allow superstitious beliefs to overrule their health concerns?
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Meanwhile, let us not take this virus that is causing a pandemic lightly, because it also has a bad habit of developing what is known as “variants” among which was the “Delta” that has already caused problems to our medical community. Lately, I heard about another one given the name of “Mun”, but which, thank God, has not yet been identified in our country, but in some others. I hope our medical and Health specialists are already working on ways to prevent its entry into our country.
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What about school openings? So far, I haven’t known yet how many, if there are some indeed, schools that have already started what they call face-to-face classes. Is it true that there at least 120 schools that will be opened as “pilots” for this school year? Where will they be? Will parents be willing to allow their children to be among the “cases” not only “to study”, but “for studying”? At the same time, though, let us encourage everyone to submit to vaccination, because it is proving to really be effective. And our government is doing its part to enable us to avail of it.
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On a lighter note – what do you think of this, girls? Are you ready to accept and work for the election of another woman for president? The air is now humming with rumors that we may have another female leader in the person of the presidential daughter, Sara Duterte Carpio, daughter of you-know-who. Well, she is not a newbie in politics, being presently the mayor of Davao City. And we are not new to women as presidents, remember, we’ve had Cory Aquino and Gloria Arroyo. And they didn’t do badly, at all, did they? En garde, all ye male aspirants! Here come Les Girls again!*
