“MONEY or life?”
That is the question one often hears in a robbery movie, where the life of the would-be victim lies in the hands of the armed robber.
Resisting could cost him his life. Otherwise, he survives but loses his hard-earned money.
Today in the time of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, a parallel circumstance emerges with the government’s announcement that Western Visayas, now a “low-risk area,” is moving out of the “enhanced community quarantine” classification to “modified general community quarantine” on Saturday (May 16), which would relax restrictions and gradually shift to a “new normal” way of life.
This time, the applicable question goes, “Life, or livelihood?”
Choose life and you could lose your job; livelihood, and you could lose your life to COVID.
But if we could have both life and livelihood at the same time, why not go for it?
“Just observe physical distancing, wear mask, rub alcohol and wash your hands with soap and water,” we are told, “to minimize the risk of catching COVID.”
What was unimaginable until the second week of March 2020 is now a reality: Some of us would rather extend the lockdown further for fear of a “second wave” when the ebbing rate of COVID’s contamination would have spiked once more.
As I was writing this yesterday, the World Health Organization’s updated world “odometer” had hit 4,343,251 cases, of which 1,604,559 had recovered and 292,913 had died.
In Philippine setting, the numbers are 11,350 cases, 2,106 confirmed recoveries and 751 deaths.
Mayor Jerry P. Treñas of Iloilo City, which has only 16 cases including one death, yesterday said that while he was somehow apprehensive about the “second wave” upon relaxation of lockdown, “We have to keep the economy moving. People have to return to work to sustain family life.”
The fear of a “second wave” stems from the presumption that, even when masked, people converging in one place risk infecting each other.
I doubt that popular presumption because it has no logical basis. Otherwise, given the long weeks under lockdown, all families living under one roof without mask would be in the worse danger of mass-infection.
In a city where only 16 individuals of its half a million population catch the coronavirus, there is more reason to worry about the hundreds or thousands of those suffering from flu and pneumonia, which could also be fatal.
Our doctors know so little about the “made-in-China” virus that they could not explain why it is so contagious. All that they know is that it passes from one person to another through saliva droplets entering the other’s mouth, nose or eyes; or by way of a hand touching a droplet and rubbing his mouth, eyes or nose with it.
If it were that simple, then wearing a mask, physical distancing and handwashing would be preventive enough.
Two obvious reasons, therefore, jut out of the panicky public reaction to COVID. First, it is transmissible.
Second, there is no approved medicine or vaccine to prevent or cure it.
But the records showing more recoveries than deaths attest to the capability of one’s immune system, plus palliative care in a hospital, to beat the virus.
No thanks to panic, there are government officials who would prefer lockdown for another half-month for fear of that “second wave”.
Their constituents panic for a different reason. A crying woman who has no more job to return to was caught by a TV camera crying, “Mahirap mawalan ng trabaho. Wala na akong ipakakain sa pamilya ko.” (hvego31@gmail.com/PN)
