By Arundathie Sangakkara –

Just when you think that the politicians are the scum of the earth, and that the super-rich, the privileged loot all things that matter, sovereignty and all, enter the Sino-dragon from China from the Galle Face side to prove just that.

If this national debacle stopped at that it’s a relief.

But no.

There is the vaccine and its continued theft.

And enter the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) to loot that.

Not just the GMOA, but the MILs and FILs and mothers, fathers, spouses and ten-year-old kids of the GMOA.

The entire extended jingband.

On a trade union band wagon of decayed morality.

Shamelessly preening like peacocks on an entitlement spree.

Except when the peacock preens, its bottom is naked.

The GMOA, clad in actual clothes, PPE and all, have circulated a form to be filled by its membership, no doubt with the concurrence of the government, to “arrange” the first dose and second dose of the Astrazeneca vaccine, and other vaccines as first dose to the “immediate family members”. “Immediate family members” include mother-in-law, father-in-law, mother, father, wife, and apparently children- even ten-year-olds!

This is the section of the data base received by Colombo Telegraph from a whistleblower from within.

Really, GMOA, really?

Stealing the Second Dose to Vaccinate GMOA Families For First Dose

In this pathetic, system eroded nation, only a fraction out of the 950,000 people vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine were given the second dose in a legitimate manner. The GMOA is touting for the first dose of the Astrazeneca vaccine from the stock meant for second booster dose of the public. They want those vaccines to be given as first dose for the immediate family. Currently, predominantly Sinopharm, the Chinese vaccine and Sputnik, the Russian vaccine are offered to the public as first dose. A Ministry of Health circular has explicitly forbidden the use of the currently available AstraZeneca vaccines as first dose.

Is the GMOA and its family jingbands above the law of the land?

Why does the GMOA think that its members are entitled to loot the second dose of the people? The immunity of whose who got the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine is waning because the booster dose has not been given in time.

On what moral basis is the GMOA asking its membership if they would like the GMOA to mediate the looting of the second booster dose of the people to inoculate it as the first dose for their “immediate families”?

Doesn’t the second booster dose belong to the people of this country on a priority basis, according to age, comorbidities and risk?

How does nepotism qualify a mother, father, MIL, FIL or spouse of anyone eligible to jump the queue?

Seriously, Padeniya, how is the mother, father or family member of a doctor any different to a bus driver exposed to thousands of people, a nurse, a policeman, a bank teller?

Family Members Of Doctors Are Safer

The family member of a doctor is actually more protected than the family members of any other category of workers. In the hierarchy of the health workers, doctors are probably more well off than other categories such as nurses, attendants, para medics, sanitary workers etc. They probably have more nuclear families and individual housing that minimizes crowding, although the data base received by Colombo Telegraph indicates that doctors seem to be doing extended family living and in fact it’s like a community camp according to their claims that their MIL, FIL, mom, dad, wife are all living together. Feels like they are living like those jumbo families depicted in cheap Indian Teledramas!

Those are shameless lies or partial lies told to grab the vaccine, we all know that.

The doctors are given the highest priority in receiving Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and they are the most knowledgeable about avoiding infection. This is because their higher knowledge and adherence to universal safety precautions and also because they are cautious due to the high likelihood of encountering a patient. Even the patients who come to the hospital are careful as they know they may be surrounded by potential Covid patients inside a hospital.

A bus driver with lesser education and no PPE similar to a doctor is routinely exposed to average people on the road not exercising the same precautions because they are seemingly well, but may be infected.

By this logic the family members of a bus driver are more at risk of contracting Covid from an asymptomatic or even a symptomatic carrier.

The heroic staff of hospitals such as the IDH are managing thousands of Covid patients without a break for the last one and a half years. If being a doctor makes the family members more vulnerable, then all the mothers, fathers, MILs, FILs and children of the IDH staff would be hospitalized or dead by now, considering the extremely high frequency of exposure to Covid patients by their “doctor relative”.

But this is not the case

The case is that the GMOA and their membership think that their privileged status as doctors gives them the entitlement to consider similar aged, similarly or more vulnerable lives as insignificant and disposable.

The case is that the family members of doctors feel that they fact that they have a doctor in the family somehow obliges that doctor to full fill his duty of “somehow getting the vaccine before everyone else”.

This is entitlement, ego, selfishness, power play and nothing else.

Tell me again, how are the lives  of the mother of the bus driver, ambulance driver or the 1990 Suwasariya driver less “valuable” than a doctor’s mother?

How?

Pray, tell me?

In which WHO sanctioned risk category did doctor’s family identified as a special priority group? Is blood thicker than morality? Equity? Justice? Fair play?

These doctors are no better than that pseudo-liberal Asoka Handagama who jumped the vaccine queue and justified his actions stating that he “did a national service because Corona can hang on to him, come home with him and infect his 24-year-old daughter employed in the garment sector working from home”.

Demanding Blood-Sucker Ransom For Vaccine

The most demeaning and inhuman aspect of the GMOA was explicit throughout the Covid epidemic. It promoted sorcery, concoctions, steam pots and what not in a shameless and pathetic attempt give dress myth in science; to divert the attention from the gross failure of the government. The GMOA did not show any professional or moral urgency towards hastily obtaining the vaccine for its membership nor to the public for over one year since the Covid-19 epidemic started. It was utterly and despicably sold out to the unscientific JooJoo that is not allowed in any civilized society in the face of a pandemic.

Suddenly, the GMOA has gone ”all scientific” going so far as to “inventing” a new risk group “immediate family members of doctors”. However, this invention and its attempted implementation come with a blood price.

According to the letter circulated to the membership collecting data about the immediate family members for the looted vaccine, there is a catch. Only those members who have paid their membership fee to the GMOA – an estimated Rs 6000 are eligible to be the beneficiaries of this “humanitarian union effort”.

Let’s do a bit of math, shall we?

Annual fee of a GMOA member = Rs 6000

Number of members of the GMOA = Rs 23,000

Annual income from the membership fee = Rs 138,000,000 (138 million)

Monthly income from the membership fee = 138,000,000/ 12 = Rs 11,500,000

How much of this sit in fixed deposits?

How much of this was spent on the welfare of the membership during the Covid-19 epidemic? How much did the GMOA spend on the welfare of the doctors who were quarantined in centers? Who were infected with the disease? Did this same GMOA enquire after the welfare of the “immediate families” of the doctors when that happened?

Did they even maintain a database of the doctors infected with Covid and offer support to them?

How much of this money was spent of protecting the GMOA membership by investing in or donating PPE?

They promoted their holy trinity of myth “hutti- mutti-pani” (pans-pots – syrup).

Now they are keeping the GMOA knife to the neck of the membership to distribute the vaccine looted from the general public and demand a membership fee ransom before distributing the “looted goods”

How morally corrupt can a union become?

When its convenient they spew the words “World Health Organization” “WHO”!!! Where is a special vaccine recipient category called ”immediate family members” in any WHO guideline?

GMOA, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, stupid!