|
I wonder if this will be the final nail in President Piņera's coffin. My husband was telling me that there is no impeachment process included in the constitution as there is in the US, so he'd probably have to resign. His popularity has been low since the protests in 2019, often in the single digits. The pandemic response has had its ups and downs. His popularity is up a bit now, because they've been rolling out the vaccines pretty quickly. However, all bets are off if the vaccine being used here isn't very effective, as many suspect.
Another expat I know here that likes to crunch the numbers said yesterday that of the larger countries that are vaccinating a lot, nearly all - US, UK, Israel - are seeing new cases level off or decline. The two exceptions are Chile and Serbia, the two countries that are mainly using Chinese-made vaccines - Sinovac here and Sinopharm in Serbia. They both use the older technology of an inactivated virus. Interesting.
Weird, I thought my husband would be trying to convince me to get the Sinovac vaccine once I qualify (probably next month). However, yesterday he said he understands if I want to wait a bit and see what the situation is as far as the other vaccines that have been ordered or for which they are negotiating purchases. I imagine that production has to ramp up soon and it may not be all that long that we will finally start getting more Pfizer shipments and possibly J&J (being negotiated) or AstraZeneca (ordered). Right now, Pfizer is only giving us crumbs - less than 500,000 doses in all. I work from home and don't need to go out too much, so I am pretty low risk.
I think he will also have to get revaccinated eventually so we can do that trip to Portugal once the situation improves. I was reading that the EU is considering requiring a vaccination passport to travel there and it will most likely not accept vaccines that are not approved for use there as valid.
I find it interesting that there have been a lot of articles written about how fast they have been vaccinating here, but they are written as if we are already have received a lot of Pfizer, AstraZeneca, etc. That is simply not true. Ordered or being negotiated does not mean they have arrived and are in use. I wonder if the government is feeding them that narrative.
96% of the population here is now in one of the two most restricted phases as of today.
|