Fear of COVID-19 ‘kills’

By Herbert Vego

UNITED STATES President Franklin D. Roosevelt is well-remembered for this quotation from his 1933 inaugural address:

“Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

That quote fits to a T the fear of the “unknown” known as coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a pandemic that has scared us into wearing mask, physical distancing, and staying at home.

Because the disease is new and “imported” from China, most doctors have not even seen the microscopic virus except from enlarged pictures. The only passed-on information we have about it is that its mode of transmission comes in droplets passed on from one person to another’s mouth, nose, or eyes.

Was it “fear” that prevented doctors and nurses at the Western Visayas Sanitarium in Sta. Barbara, Iloilo from providing “tender loving care” to a presumed COVID-19 patient?

The 39-year-old man from Anilao town reportedly died of heart attack, not of COVID, on Saturday, June 6, while in isolation.

His relatives said that he could have recovered had the “frontliners” attended to him appropriately.

It’s ironic that the WHO’s magnification of COVID-19 vis-à-vis other diseases has scared us to the max. 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.

 

-oOo-

 

AN update from the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland said that, contrary to popular belief, asymptomatic COVID cases that infect are “very rare.”

In the words of Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO’s emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, “From the data we have, it still seems to be rare that an asymptomatic person actually transmits onward to a second individual. It’s very rare.”

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III had earlier told the Senate that there was still no evidence that asymptomatic cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) were contagious.

A former Health Secretary, Rep. Janette Garin (1^st Dist., Iloilo), however, thinks otherwise, and that 40 to 50 percent of COVID cases are asymptomatic or those who behave alive and kicking, without the  symptoms of the disease such as fever, dry cough, sore throat, loss of taste, and smell.

Under the new normal, therefore, everybody is presumed COVID-positive.  That’s why we wear a mask, and keep a one-meter distance from each other whenever outside the privacy of our homes.

This cautious presumption, however, tends to be more false than true.  If we don’t contaminate our family at home, then we are COVID-free and are not expected to “infect” others outside, with or without a mask.

The exaggerated morbidity of COVID, remember, turned hitherto friendly neighbors into “savages” stoning the house of a family of six in Lambunao,  Iloilo sometime in March 2020.

All six had tested COVID-positive.  But with medical intervention while on home quarantine, only the husband/father in the family died. The four children remained asymptomatic until eventually test-cleared.

The WHO’s explanation is that, with a strong immune system, the body of a COVID victim produces proteins called antibodies to fight and destroy the coronavirus.

But with an immune system made weaker by hunger, some of the poor jeepney drivers who lost their jobs to the lockdown might have died of non-COVID diseases.

 

-oOo-

 

The “expired” power-distribution franchisee Panay Electric Co. (PECO) reminds us of the saying. “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

It’s a case of amor propio where the former franchisee is sour-graping against present franchisee MORE Electric and Power Corp. (MORE Power) in a desperate move to discredit the latter.

What for when it would not bring back PECO’s franchise? Since Judge Emerald Requina-Contreras of the Iloilo Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 23 has already issued a writ of possession in favor of MORE Power, the law expropriating the distribution utility (RA 11212) will remain valid in the next 25 years.

And with the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) and the Iloilo City government having cancelled PECO’s certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) and business permit, respectively, PECO does not legally exist anymore.

What does PECO hope to accomplish  through Ako Bisaya party-list Representative Sonny Lagon, who filed House Resolution No. 785 urging Congress to probe MORE Power’s rotating brownouts?

The probe would prove PECO’s own negligence in maintaining the old utility that MORE Power is now painstakingly upgrading.

To quote MORE Power president Roel Castro, “The present power technology in Iloilo City belongs to the 1940s and 1950s.”

Rep. Lagon, being a native of Cebu, does not know that. He is more “at home” in cockpits, being a breeder of fighting cocks.