FOR ALL we know it could just be a plain and simple mugging or robbery gone bad. Let’s not go overboard with the “red tagging” angle yet. Remember stewardess Christine Dacera? It turned out she was neither killed nor raped.
It would be prudent to wait for official investigation results before rabidly accusing the government in having anything to do with the attack on lawyer Angelo Karlo Guillen just because he happens to be a member of the National Union of People’s Lawyers or NUPL.
From initial reports, it seems that Guillen was attacked and stabbed with a screwdriver, not really the standard weapon of choice for any professional “assassin”. And the attacker or attackers appeared to be “wearing slippers in tandem”, meaning they were on foot although sketchy reports said they were given a lift by two motorcycles after. Really, how convinient. As expected, they took his backpack and side bag which muggers do, certainly not your “professional assassin”.
As I said, let’s just wait for the results of the formal investigations. For all we know there could be another angle besides the “mugging or robbery” and the very convenient and headline-grabbing “EJK”.
Let’s make it more interesting or intriguing. There might be a “love triangle” angle. Jilted lovers have been known to do more bizarre things.
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I get it. You don’t like President Duterte. No, you hate him. But must you also bad mouth a perfectly good vaccine that has been donated to us by China? It’s so far used in most Middle East countries, Indonesia, Thailand, South America…
So trust science, not your stupid biases.
By the way, our former colonial masters, the United States of America, is selling their vaccines, not donating.
In case you missed it: Pfizer has four state-of-the-art manufacturing plants in Dalian, Suzhou, Wuxi, and Fuyang. These plants have been manufacturing pharmaceuticals for Pfizer since the 1980s up to the present. So now you know that your much coveted Pfizer vaccine was most probably made in China.
Of course, at the end of the day it’s just business as usual for the big pharmaceutical companies, pandemic or no pandemic, regardless of who owns or where the vaccines are manufactured. After all, they were set up in the first place for profit. The humanitarian reasons are just a by-product.
And yes, you have the right not to get yourself vaccinated. But you don’t have the right to make yourself the vector of the virus and infect others.
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Speaking of vaccines, vaccinations and Pfizer, I see fat people seriously hospitalized or worst dying from the virus COVID-19 and why? Let’s check out these excerpts from a Feb. 28, 2021 article on www.theguardian.com/world/2021:
Pfizer vaccine may be less effective in people with obesity
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine may be less effective in people with obesity, data suggests.
Italian researchers have discovered that healthcare workers with obesity produced only about half the amount of antibodies in response to a second dose of the jab compared with healthy people. Although it is too soon to know what this means for the efficacy of the vaccine, it might imply that people with obesity need an additional booster dose to ensure they are adequately protected against coronavirus.
Previous research has suggested that obesity – which is defined as having a body mass index (BMI) over 30 – increases the risk of dying of Covid-19 by nearly 50%, as well as increasing the risk of ending up in hospital by 113%.
Some of this may be because people with obesity often have other underlying medical conditions, such as heart disease or type 2 diabetes, that increase their risk from the coronavirus. Excess body fat can also cause metabolic changes, such as insulin resistance and inflammation, which make it harder for the body to fight off infections.
This constant state of low-grade inflammation can also weaken certain immune responses, including those launched by the B and T cells that trigger a protective response following vaccination. Separate research has shown that the flu vaccine is only half as effective in people with obesity compared to those who are a healthy weight.
The new study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, provides the first direct evidence to suggest a similar problem might occur with Covid-19 vaccines.
Aldo Venuti, of the Istituti Fisioterapici Ospitalieri in Rome, and his colleagues assessed the antibody response following two doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in 248 healthcare workers. Seven days after receiving the second dose, 99.5% of them had developed an antibody response, and this response was greater than that recorded in people who had recovered from Covid-19. However, the response was blunted in people who were overweight and obese.
“Since obesity is a major risk factor for morbidity and mortality for patients with Covid-19, it is mandatory to plan an efficient vaccination programme in this subgroup,” Aldo and his colleagues wrote. “Although further studies are needed, this data may have important implications to the development of vaccination strategies for Covid-19, particularly in obese people. If our data was to be confirmed by larger studies, giving obese people an extra dose of the vaccine or a higher dose could be options to be evaluated in this population.” (brotherlouie16@gmail.com)/PN
