IMAGINE a blind swordsman brandishing his sword against an unseen enemy.
That’s us facing an unseen, microscopic enemy now universally known as the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Hear ye this caveat heard from the World Health Organization (WHO): “The virus can spread directly from one person to another through droplets entering the latter’s nose, mouth or eyes.”
But since the virus could survive for some time wherever it falls, touch it and you risk catching the disease. You need to wear a protective mask and wash your hands frequently.
WHO has amended its previous announcement, conceding that coronavirus could also travel airborne; therefore contagious.
The disease has become an exponential pandemic. Within three months, it has claimed 597,458 victims worldwide as of yesterday. Of that number, 133,373 have recovered and 27,370 have died.
The United States and Italy are now on 1st and 2nd places in the number of cases, with 104,256 and 86,498 cases, respectively, outracing China’s 81,394.
The Philippines is on 42nd with 803 cases as of yesterday, of which 31 have recovered and 54 have died.
The coronavirus has gone a long way since its inception among residents of Wuhan City, China in December 2019. TV footages showed people collapsing on the streets.
Initial reports linked the “mystery disease” to the seafood market selling “exotic meat” of snakes, bats and pangolins.
Today, however, there are China watchers who speculate that the coronavirus was secretly propagated as a biological weapon aimed at crippling the United States and its allies.
Whether it’s true or false, what is clear at the moment is that the countries hardest hit are the favorite destinations of millions of Chinese tourists and traders. Wittingly or unwittingly, they could have been the “mules” of the coronavirus.
Amazingly, no less than three million Chinese visited the United States in 2019; and as many Americans visited China. The exchange must have been business-driven; many American products are made by Chinese laborers in China.
Italy, on the other hand, attracts an average of five million Chinese tourists annually.
More than 1.5million Chinese tourists and workers were in the Philippines in 2019, according to the Bureau of Immigration. Around 70,000 of them worked for the Chinese-run Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGO).
One recalls that a number of senators and congressmen had expressed unease over the influx of China mainlanders in January 2020 when the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was already sickening and killing residents of Wuhan and its neighboring cities and provinces.
In that month – to reiterate what I said in a previous column – Rep. Loren Legarda of Antique anxiously suggested to Health Secretary Francisco, “Wouldn’t it be prudent to be proactive and ban temporarily mainland tourists?”
To which Duque merely echoed the President’s argument that it could stir “diplomatic repercussion”.
In February, Sen. Risa Hontiveros accused high-profile Chinese fugitives of entering the country by bribing Bureau of Immigration personnel.
Was it too late when President Rodrigo Duterte imposed a one-month “community quarantine” in Metro Manila effective March 15, allowing only essential establishments such as hospitals, grocery stores, public markets and pharmacies to operate? By then, the Philippines had more than 100 confirmed COVID-19 cases.
He eventually authorized local government units to impose their own lockdowns, necessitating the suspension of work and school, restriction of mobility, curfew and “social distancing,”
Should the lockdown — meant to minimize the chances of the COVID-sick contaminating others — succeed in getting our lives back to normal, then let us spend the rest of our lives regaining the material blessings we have lost to COVID-19. (hvego31@gmail.com /PN)
