Several years ago, I read a biography of Hillary Rodham Clinton who was the former US first lady, Secretary of State and senator, and, at that time, presidential candidate in the 2016 US presidential elections.

COVID-19 has been bringing suffering and death to the entire world for over a year now. Many of us, as a result, have gone through some form of lockdown or quarantine; have lost an acquaintance, a friend or a family member to the virus; or have gotten sick ourselves from COVID itself or the hardships it has brought on. All of us have been affected by it, one way or the other.

FOR MOST OF US, the growing evidence that the efficacy of COVID vaccines is declining over time should be a cause of worry. For the drug companies that have spent billions of dollars developing them, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

AUDITORS, by their very job description, are not expected to be warm and cuddly types. In private companies, especially those listed in the stock exchange, there are even three layers of these corporate sleuths looking for dead bodies in the closet.

In a publication of the Asian Development Bank in 2011 entitled Asian 2050: Realizing the Asian Century, the phenomenon of the “middle income trap” was first clearly defined.

By this time, it has become a cliché to say that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed a lot of things in our lives. Latest figures put the number of cases worldwide at 216 million and the deaths at 4.5 million. These rising numbers undoubtedly conjure images of a war, more so if we consider the major disruption in our so-called normal lives — from restrictions on physical mobility to a major economic decline.

FROM out of the blue, at a televised meeting of his COVID-19 Task Force, President Duterte justified the dolomite beach “nourishment” project by defending his choice of Roy Cimatu as his Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources. He, typically, cited his personal trust in Cimatu as having worked in Davao when he was mayor there. Therefore, it seems, in his opinion, Cimatu, who happens to be a retired general, can do no wrong.

For more than a year now, the current COVID-19 pandemic has affected “how we do things” in all aspects of our lives.

The Court in Professional Services, Inc. overruled the old theory that professionals are considered personally liable for the fault or negligence they commit in the discharge of their duties, and their employer cannot be held liable for such fault or negligence, or more specifically that “a hospital cannot be held liable for the fault or negligence of a physician or surgeon in the treatment or operation of patients,” holding that: “However, the efficacy of the foregoing doctrine has weakened with the significant developments in medical care.

Members of the Philippine Hospital Association (PHA) are threatening to disengage from the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) over the latter’s issuance of a circular suspending the payment of its obligations to hospitals due to possible fraud and unethical acts on the part of the hospitals and their medical staff.

After food, air, and water, humanity’s second most useful commodities would be fossil fuels. From fishing and sea transport, farming and land transport, storage, air transport and electricity generation, their value and usefulness are beyond question.

Today is the sixth death anniversary of my wife Mae. The time since then may have alleviated the pain of losing her. But the pain, doubtless, won’t go away. In fact, the pain takes new forms as we all continue to experience tragedies all around.