We talked about climate change, global warming, damaging CO2 emissions and how we must crack down on them, yet at midnight, December 31st, 2021, the sky over Aruba lit up with an amazing dancing display of fireworks, for intense 15 minutes that then subsided, until my neighbor started shooting some giant pyrotechnics at 3am. I mean GIANT.
Happy New Year!
As expected, December 31st provided fodder for the first column of January 1st, 2022.
The Chair of the Board of Directors @Dr Horacio Oduber hospital Aruba decided to share his vaccine-hesitant views with the press, on the last day of the year. Mind you, he is an administrator, not a medical professional. I believe his previous experience, prior to Aruba, was at an eye treatment center, helping people see again without glasses or lenses by means of lens implants or laser treatments, thus just because he WORKS at HOH doesn’t give him any authority to comment on medical issues, though some people could mistakenly consider him an expert of sort, by working in proximity to the pulmonary specialists.
He must also have a death wish, or an iron clad work contract: Because if the country’s top banana, the Minister of Health, his boss, believes in the effectiveness of the vaccine and promotes it, as an employee he should keep his personal views to himself, unless asked.
And he was not asked. So why this nonsense?
He volunteered his ruminations.
He must like publicity.
I find it strange.
Because before hiring, Sept 2020, they should have had a simple conversation with the man to find out his core values beyond his resume.
What a fiasco. For a year already, he has been saying that only the obese are dying. And in his internal mail he is famous for spreading anti-vax messages, also walking around the hospital without a mask. The whole world is pushing populations to get vaccinated, and this guy who is not even a doctor, says it’s useless.
Sadly, this really supports the least smart in our community: “E jefe mes ta bisa e no ta sirbi.”
And I want to see what a pissed off Bestuurskantoor would say or do.
To balance his narrative: The New England Journal of Medicine published a piece December 30th by two South African doctors, a paper based on data, not notions, in which they say that according to their scientific research, the vaccine maintained its effectiveness at a reduced level – probably around 70% protection against hospital admissions, for Covid19, that was presumed to have been caused by the Omicron variant, as compared with the rate associated with the Delta variant, earlier in the year.
The addition of a booster, they add, another dose of vaccine, may mitigate this reduction in vaccine effectiveness, signed two researchers, from Johannesburg.
