If you don’t know what desperation is, then you haven’t been following the story of Leader of the Opposition (LOO), Harmon, and his encounters with the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccines. Let’s start at the very beginning, when Lil Joe and company went to the head of the line to get their jabs months ago in April. At the time, he had all the facts at his disposal – the name of the vaccine (Sputnik V), its history (invented and manufactured in Russia by Gamaleya), its sourcing (via one of UAR’s Sheik Al Maktoum’s companies) and its price. The Govt was open and above board on all fronts.
The Govt had also explained that, because of the developed countries’ massive forward purchases and embargo against exports of the vaccines they were hoarding, we were pursuing all avenues to secure vaccines of all types. The authorities – including the President – joined the WHO and other leaders to chastise the immoral stance of the developed countries on hogging the life-saving vaccines! Guyana had received AstraZeneca from India via Barbados, and directly from India, plus Sinopharm from China. These were all sourced to deal with the burgeoning pandemic, with deaths and infections inexorably rising.
Yet, it was only last week that Harmon demanded that the vaccine be pulled!! because, he claimed, he’d “discovered” that Al Maktoum’s vaccines were from dodgy sources. We would note that Harmon and the rest of the PNC had maintained a very ambivalent attitude towards the ENTIRE VACCINATION PROGRAMME, and their constituents – especially in Reg 10 – were very reluctant to participate.
Harmon cited a Norwegian newspaper that claimed Al Maktoum was working with some Norwegian “convict” to purchase and sell Sputnik at exorbitant prices. For good measure, he threw in a claim that Mexico had received 200,000 defective doses of Sputnik – the same quantity as Guyana, as if that proved anything! He was playing fast and loose with the facts – which was that the shipment of 200,000 Sputnik to Mexico had nothing to do with a shipment of 5775 defective doses that were passing through Mexico en route to Honduras were detected and intercepted! If the shipment to Mexico was “fake”, wouldn’t the authorities also have intercepted them? Or their Mexican lives didn’t matter as much as Hondurans?
Caught in his concoction, Harmon then jumped onto another limb to claim he’d now discovered that the WHO hadn’t approved Sputnik!! Imagine, a man who’s vying to lead this nation would have us believe he hadn’t done his due diligence when he took the jab!! What gives? Harmon realises he’s slipping into political oblivion and is throwing a Hail Mary.
But playing with the lives of all Guyanese?
This is sick!
…and mutations
Viruses, your Eyewitness reminds you, are basically just DNA or RNA strands, and aren’t living things. As such, they can’t reproduce on their own – but do so by entering our cells and taking over our cells’ DNA or RNA to replicate themselves. Sneaky little buggers! But when they mess around with our DNA and RNA, there’s a high likelihood of these being altered to become the feared “mutations”!! Long before the X-Men, these were the original mutants!
So, after that Corona viruses jumped species from bats to humans (either from the Wuhan “wet-markets” or “labs”, take your pick! – we knew there’d be new “variants” – mutants that would vary in transmissibility, lethality, or replication! The first significant mutant appeared in England, and was called Alpha. It was more potent by all three criteria. We now have a “Delta” variant that has one-upped the Alpha on all fronts.
What this means is that we would have to keep on producing new vaccines to keep up with the variants until the entire planet achieves herd immunity.
We’ve only just begun this fight.
…and myopia
We’re reminded that Hess from the US and CNOOC from China own 55% of the interest in our humongously rich Stabroek Oil.
So how come we criticize only Exxon?
