“THE MANSION is closing down in June,” lamented Mayor Jerry P. Treñas in his press conference yesterday, referring to one of the finest hotels in Iloilo City.
It’s like saying that the hotel, which had locked down like all the others with the President’s declaration of “community quarantine,” would no longer re-open.
Department of Tourism (DOT) regional director Helen Catalbas, on the other hand, admitted that the tourism industry had collapsed.
This corner knows of a hotelier in Boracay who still pays his idle employees half of their monthly salaries while uncertain of how long he could go on losing.
Even the most optimistic among businessmen believe that economic recovery would only be possible after the coronavirus crisis would have faded away.
Not all of them believe though that more Filipino victims of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) would have fallen down had we not gone along with more than a hundred other countries in locking down.
But have two and a half months of near-inactivity really saved lives? Could we not have saved the economy as well by simply social distancing, face masking and handwashing? This is based on the world-accepted view that coronavirus may only be transmitted by droplets spread from the carrier to the mouth, nose or eyes of another person.
Days from now, hundreds of thousands of workers, if not millions, would return to work, only to find out there’s no more work to return to.
As of yesterday, the accumulated number of COVID-19 cases in the Philippines was 15,049, of whom only 904 have died. A greater 3,506 have recovered while the remaining 10,639 are still active cases hoping to recover.
In a previous column, I deplored the media magnification of COVID-19 vis-à-vis other diseases. Annual statistics from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) say that no less than 1,500 Filipinos die daily – yes, daily – mostly from other killer diseases.
Would we not one day wake up to suffer worse woes than a disease that has afflicted only a fraction of one percent of the eight billion world population? As of yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) had recorded a total of 352,287 COVID-caused deaths worldwide.
What future awaits our children amid conflicting views on whether to open schools on August 24 as suggested by Education Secretary Leonor Briones?
President Duterte would rather delay it further until after an anti-COVID vaccine would have showed up. But this could be another bone of contention if the vaccine would come from China.
Sinopharm, China’s biggest pharmaceutical company, has asked Health Secretary Francisco Duque to come up with Filipino volunteers to its clinical trial for its newly-developed vaccine.
Public reaction has so far discouraging.
“The Chinese are looking for guinea pigs,” somebody posted on Facebook. “They would like to profit from the virus that they themselves spread.”
COVID-19 has compelled the United States to move away from the symbiotic relationship that globalization has fostered between itself and China.
“China virus,” US President Donald Trump once exclaimed, as if referring to the rumor that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was behind the creation of what could be China’s biological weapon made in Wuhan City to dominate the world.
Fox Business Network recently reported that Washington might pay American companies’ “moving costs” to bring their manufacturing companies in China back to the US.
While the Philippine leadership enjoys “friendship” with China despite the latter’s occupation of our territories at the West Philippine Sea, the United States does not see it that way.
Well, that should neutralize the rumor that China would conquer the Philippines without firing a shot. (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
