You are fully aware of the realities on the ground. The most pressing national agenda is vaccine procurement from overseas sources, the best vaccine our limited resources can buy. Then, the mapping of the supply and distribution routes, including the multimodal carriers that would move the vaccines from their origin into the country. Then, the final task, and this is charting the priorities — who gets it first and why. The vaccine rollout, if you will.
There is no room for missteps on these concerns such as buying the vaccine with the least efficacy at a higher cost and moving the vaccines with no precise maps and timelines. Right now, on the plans for the vaccine procurement and distribution, there is only chaos and dysfunction — as usual.
The two institutions that, in theory, are to coordinate on the vaccine sourcing, the task force on vaccines and the Health department, are not up to the task. The Health department is headed by a doctor described as one better versed with real estate deals than serious planning for a health crisis; the task force is headed by a well-intentioned former general with no adequate training on vaccines and the supply chain.
Now, it is time for you to step up and spring into action. Jointly, as if in a tight bond, to dedicate your expertise into drawing the entire architecture of the vaccine procurement plan for government. Write the best plan with little room for guesswork, holes, leaks and gaps. Where to get and at what delivery timelines. Who gets inoculated first, which should be based on the strategic calculations of bringing the country back to normalcy? The first ever vaccinations, of Presidential Security Group (PSG) personnel getting the first vaccines via the usual smuggling route from China, is testament to what I cited earlier as the chaos and utter dysfunction in the vaccine acquisition process. Such disasters are supposed to take place in Banana Republics, not in a supposed Strong Republic such as ours.
Before the PSG personnel, the talk within the circles of power was this: there were senators and well-connected private individuals who got on the vaccine line first.
Looking at the initial vaccination — who got it and how – every sinew in your body that says sense of country would be probably stirred. Instead of health workers dying on the frontlines of the Covid fight, it is the well-connected that get the first vaccination. In other countries, the first on the vaccine line are either the health workers or the elderly and the immune-compromised. Here, it is the usual VIPs.
That tragic backdrop of the first vaccinations, I think, would force you to drop any hesitancy to put your expertise in the service of the country — via writing a comprehensive, science-based, data-driven vaccine acquisition and distribution plan. Men and women of goodwill coming to the aid to prevent a pile up of disasters.
Write the vaccine plan first. Give your peers the opportunity to review and fine-tune the plan. Incorporate all the worthy suggestions, then submit it to the government. Worry about the receptiveness of government to your expertise later.
If the cluelessness of our government leaders and public institutions on the vaccine plan is not compelling enough to move you into writing a comprehensive, data and science-based plan, please look at the broader national picture — which is that of an economically prostrate country. Despite the compliance of Filipinos to the lockdown edicts, which should have reined in the virus had the government did its part in the virus containment effort, we are now the Asian economic laggard. And tops in infection cases and mortality. The country has been the hardest hit, the one that absorbed the most suffering in the region.
The consensus opinion of the foreign banks, the foreign think tanks and the multilateral institutions on our medium-term prospects is grim. The Covid scarring would be long and deep. We would be one of the five emerging economies across the globe that would really struggle to recover. The other forecast is grimmer — we would be last on the recovery train.
The joblessness is at a historic high. Around 4 million families suffer from involuntary hunger. Millions of children of school age have been cast off the public educational system.
Let this sink in. A well-thought, science and data-based vaccine procurement and distribution plan is the only thing standing between a Lost Decade for the country and a chance to recover from past blunders and policy mistakes to do right this time.
Why do well-meaning people think that the government, if there is an expert-written vaccine plan available, would adopt it though grudgingly? One reason is there is no real plan. The second is this. No one in the decision-making level is well grounded on the supply chain, which is the seamless, safest, most competitively priced way of getting goods moved and delivered. A scientific mind has to be on top of the vaccine procurement process, and there is no one of that kind in the pandemic-related bureaucracy.
This is one of the rare times in our history that we truly need the unselfish services of experts, geniuses in their fields, if you will. Of course, we have been hearing passionate rants against “geniuses”. The Age of Trump has seen the full flowering of the war against science, data, expertise and facts.
But then, today is also the time we need experts and geniuses in their fields the most. The ones we need the least are the bible-quoting hucksters.
