Damned Dengvaxia lies

Former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli differentiated the three kinds of lie, saying there are, “Lies, damned lies and statistics.”

For a person clearly neither an Einstein nor an Oppenheimer with facts, data and the significance of quantitative input/output analysis, Benigno Aquino III has been casually citing Dengvaxia numbers and statistics in connection with his involvement in what is now known as the deadliest medical scam inflicted on our most vulnerable.

His accountability runs far and deep where presidential influence not only forced through premature approvals and bypassed critical safeguards but also compelled an eleventh-hour fund malversation right on the eve of the 2016 campaign to peddle his successor to a wary public.

Aquino’s candidate, the direct beneficiary of any government-sponsored campaign in 2016, had just emerged slimed, soiled, if not scarred from a knotted string of controversies that questioned not simply his leadership abilities but also his competence.

In 2011, as Transportation secretary, Aquino’s chosen spawned the continuing deterioration of the Metropolitan Railway Transit system by nullifying its maintenance contract.

In 2012, Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo perished in a plane crash that should have been preventable had transportation officials overseeing civil aviation ensured compliance with licensing and safety protocols.

In 2013, two crises, the Yolanda Tragedy and the Zamboanga Siege, were ineptly handled by the same Cabinet factotum.

In 2015, a year before his failed presidential candidacy, Manuel Roxas was implicated in various degrees in both the Mamasapano Massacre and the P1.89 billion Mahindra scandal.

Serial incompetence and failures seemed to have attended nearly every task assigned to Aquino’s successor. Since establishing a decidedly dismal record inundated with ineptitude and a visible lack of empathy for the electorate, Aquino and his Liberal Party needed a booster shot for their fledgling presidential bet given far more formidable, attuned and competent candidates that included Rodrigo Duterte, Grace Llamanzares and Jejomar Binay.

An anti-dengue mass vaccination scheme employed in vote-rich areas fit the bill. It conjured the imagery of a politico empathetic and caring of our youngest constituencies. Conducted on the eve of presidential campaigning, it made for a timely publicity stunt.

But there needed to be an epidemic as “a-tail-that-wags-the-dog” to justify tanking safety protocols and injecting helpless children en masse absent informed consent requisites.

Fast forward to today. After unquantifiable deaths and over a hundred Dengvaxia-related autopsies, to protect his fat and precious posterior from attracting fellow inmates should he eventually be jailed, Aquino in a Facebook post early this month claimed, at the time he pushed for Dengvaxia, there were 1 million dengue infections yearly. This implied a runaway plague of biblical proportions enough to justify his Dengvaxia scheme.

On page 362 in a section captioned “Disease Burden of Dengue” from a study published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, entitled “Economic Cost and Burden of Dengue in the Philippines” covering the years 2008 to 2012, medical experts determined the adjustment or expansion factor applied on the number of dengue infections that would measure, not just clinically diagnosed dengue incidences, but would account for under-reporting whether from private or public sector sources.

Factoring in aggregate direct costs, researchers computed a factor of 7.2 from a matrix reflecting ambulatory and hospitalized cases on one axis against public and private on another. This means for each reported case there are 7.2 actual cases. To determine the actual incidences and accounting for under-reporting, simply multiply the reported number by 7.2.

In November 2014 when Aquino met with Sanofi officials, the number of reported dengue cases by the Department of Health was 121,580, down by 83,326 from the previous year.

The 2014 data multiplied by 7.2 is 875,376 — a far cry from the 1,000,000 Aquino used to justify his actions.

Aquino’s bloated statistics fall under Disraeli’s definition of a lie. Against the Philippine population of 100.1 million in 2014, the actual number of dengue incidences was only 0.87 percent.

That’s hardly a compelling reason to be reckless and cause the deaths of innocent children for generations to come.