The Dengue Issue--fuzz over nothing?

A confession---I had a friend who nearly died due to dengue. He survived because people took care of him knowledgeable people who did not panic when  he was wheeled to the emergency room.

That pesky fever which shot his temperature up, is a sign that there is a fight going on between his healthy blood cells and the virus. The virus is virulent and that explains why his blood platelets are losing their numbers. When healthy blood was infused into him, he got healed, because those precious blood contained healthy antibodies which fought a good fight to save him from the clutches of Kamatayan.

You don't die due to dengue. You die of its complications.

When your body temperature heats up, your entire system goes into red alert, full time. Every organ of your body tries its darn best fighting off the invading virus. You lose the fight if your blood count drops, leading to organ failure and possibly cardiac arrest. Hence, it is important that your blood platelet count remains at 10,000 levels. If it drops, problems start.

So, dengue does not instantaneously lead to death. If left untreated, and if blood transfusion does not occur when necessary, the body of course, lacking sufficient antibodies, succumbs to the virus. Though life threatening, dengue is curable and preventable.

Our body is made to resist every single type of biological threat there is. Over time of course, or when we age, we lose precious antibodies. The loss depends on how we abuse our bodies. Having a healthy lifestyle is still the answer to every health concern. When we abuse our bodies, like, we don't have enough sleep, we eat unhealthy foods, we drink and smoke, those antibodies waste away, and bad cells take over. When that happens, expect our vulnerability to disease to hike to lethal levels.

When dengvaxia was announced to the world, millions hailed its discovery. At last, there is this vaccine which can help us fight dengue. It was not an all-cure, end-all vaccine. It was supposed to empower our bodies to fight a more effective fight against the virus. And it aims to increase our resistance to the symptoms of the disease.

Like other vaccines, which is based on human research, it is a continuing study. It may be just 95% effective today but with recent advances in medical science, it is possible to further increase the efficacy of the vaccine to higher levels. What prevents us from discovering a cure depends on the limits of our imagination and innovation. We have the science and the equipment necessary to further increase our knowledge of the virus and eventually, how to fight and kill it, if possible.

Knowing this, I am very curious why personalities which include people whom I respect in the medical profession turn into raving braggarts and become alarmists when the pharma company Sanofi announced their findings.

That firm just wanted to be transparent. They want the world to know that for the past six years, they have been tirelessly working and getting more knowledge-able about dengue. They already know that it is an enigmatic foe to fight with. It is sneaky. It evolves. It mutates. And it hides its best front before us. Like any other epidemiological study, this requires time to further determine how lethal or how susceptible it is to external influences.

Instead of helping government calm the situation, several irresponsible people for reasons probably political or they just want to ride the issue, came bursting into radio and TV booths with their own versions or interpretations of the story. Hay naku.

We must always think of the collective interests first before we brag to the world how brilliant we are.  KSP kasi ilang Pilipino. Nakakahiya. We are the only one in the world going like crazy with an imaginary threat.

Everyone in the world, kalmado, while, here we are fighting, splitting our hairs against a lowly mosquito!

We blame the DOH from implementing that mass vaccination program yet we also lay blame to them when we see hundreds of us falling over due to dengue! When incidences of dengue are going South, we don't praise the DOH. When this update was announced and we just heard the word "severe", we over-react like Kris Aquino does.

Severe for a European means getting a fever, not getting yourself killed. And fever, like what I wrote here, is the usual symptom of having a dengue. Let me state here what the World Health Organisation (WHO) says about dengue and "severe dengue"

Key facts

• Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral infection.
• The infection causes flu-like illness, and occasionally develops into a potentially lethal complication called severe dengue.
• The global incidence of dengue has grown dramatically in recent decades. About half of the world's population is now at risk.
• Dengue is found in tropical and sub-tropical climates worldwide, mostly in urban and semi-urban areas.
• Severe dengue is a leading cause of serious illness and death among children in some Asian and Latin American countries.
• There is no specific treatment for dengue/ severe dengue, but early detection and access to proper medical care lowers fatality rates below 1%.
• Dengue prevention and control depends on effective vector control measures.
• A dengue vaccine has been licensed by several National Regulatory Authorities for use in people 9-45 years of age living in endemic settings.

see this link.

WHO says "there is no specific treatment for dengue but early detection and access to proper medical care lowers fatality rates below 1%" and " dengue prevention and control depends on effective vector control measures" which means rapid pests de-infestation.

Again, it's the mosquito stupid, not the vaccine. Even if you inject yourself with hundreds of vials of that vaccine, it will not kill you--the mosquito with the virus will, if you remain untreated. And the chances of you becoming a corpse is 0.0002% due to a second dengue infestation which even is lower than having a liver ailment or a lung disease.

Frankly, the reason why we have a high incidence of dengue here in this country is because most of us do not clean our surroundings. All over, we have thousands of buckets filled with filthy water where mosquitoes larvae thrive.

We have a high incidence of poverty in this country and that explains why many of us can't buy a mosquito repellent. Some of us die of dengue because we don't have enough monies to buy ourselves medicines and excellent hospital care.

And the reason why we are poor or majority are, is because our tax monies are being pocketed by greedy individuals who are experts in thievery. Monies supposed to provide for adequate and comprehensive health care go to contractors and carpet baggers who use not their brains but their tongues to get government projects.

We are blaming a vaccine because we want to hide the real truth---we are complicit of the monumental socio-economic-political distresses that unmake us as a nation. We can't fix this country and we even cause its eventual demise, and since there is simply no social vaccine effective enough to cure our social ills, we point the blame on a vaccine which is proven to be 95% effective against dengue.

The dengue issue, honestly, is not a dengvaxia issue. It is a socio-economic and now, even political issue.