By Penelope A. Domogo, MD
What now? Almost two months have passed since the global lockdown was declared. I am retired from office work so this lockdown wasn’t so much a shock to my system. Although I missed going to church, just walking anywhere and bringing my apo to the park. Of course, I missed going to the fresh market, too. As of now here in Baguio City, senior citizens can go out on Sundays but then only groceries and pharmacies are open. I hope Mayor Magalong would also open the park and fresh market on Sundays. These are open spaces (except for some sections in Hangar) and undoubtedly, these are healthier places to go to than fully enclosed supermarkets. Surprisingly, I did not miss travelling just for pasyar or for a social event, although, of course, there are no social gatherings now. You see I have a mole on my left foot which makes me a travel-buff.
Ahh, travelling…. this actually has caused the pandemic. Think about it, even if covid-19 appeared in Wuhan market and infected people there, it wouldn’t have spread to the rest of the world if people just stayed in Wuhan. If there were just cars and buses and trains going around Wuhan, still the virus would just have stayed in Wuhan and locking down Wuhan would have solved the problem. How simple life could have been, eh? How much easier it could have been if people were just walking. Sigh. But then we have cars, buses and trains that crisscross China and well… we have airplanes that crisscross the world over. Before you can say “Yikes”, at least one airplane has taken off from at least one airport. Loring Chien wrote in 2017 that, on the average, there are “217 take offs per minute worldwide.” Wow! Per minute???!!! We are that travel crazy??? And the biggest commercial airplane, Airbus a380, can seat 900 people! That’s bigger than the population of barangay Nacagang in Sagada municipality! Before its lockdown on January 23 this year, roughly about 30,000 people fly out of Wuhan on an average day. Covid-19 was reported in December 2019 but the disease had began earlier. Thus we can say that, before lockdown, there was unhampered mobility of this virus from Wuhan to anywhere in the world and then flying from one country to another. Invisible to everybody, these germs had (and are having) a free ride, carried unknowingly by people. I even highly suspect they rode business class. Talaga naman this virus! Wuhan airport had direct flights to New York, London, San Francisco, Paris, Rome and Moscow- really crisscrossing the world. In four months, the virus has spread worldwide infecting more that 3M people. But if you do your arithmetic (I am fond of this) and you think the virus is that infectious, our situation could have been worse. Wuhan’s population alone is about 11M. We still thank God for where we are now.
Not only fast travel, though, caused the pandemic. Wuhan is a congested city with a population density of 1200 people/square kilometer but central Wuhan had even up to 90,000/square kilometer street-level population density (researchgate.net)! People jampacked in the streets and in buildings. As I write, Wuhan reported 50,333 covid-19 cases.
When you look at the worldwide statistics, you will note that the most number of covid cases are in the big cities. Same here in the Philippines. But of course. For three main reasons. Firstly, they have more people and second, they are congested- higher population density. The virus is mainly transmitted through respiratory droplets or spray so the nearer the person is to you, the more chances of you inhaling the droplet. Di lalo na if the vehicle or room is airconditioned so there’s no free flow of air. Think of the congested Metro Rail & Light Rail and overloaded buses in Manila with everybody breathing into each other’s face and you can imagine the havoc that the virus could have done there. Think of Divisoria and Quiapo and a Wednesday in Baclaran. Manila is the world’s most densely populated city, according to worldpopulationreview.com with a population density of 42,857 people per square kilometer. The total population of Metro Manila is 12.8M (2015 census), bigger than Wuhan, and it reported 5,640 cases. Baguio City has an estimated total population of 372,680 and population density is 7000/square kilometer. It reported 16 cases. We really have a lot to thank God for. Apparently, the virus thrives more in wintry places, our President imposed a lockdown early and our local authorities are doing their best. Thank you so much!
Number 3 reason why there are more cases in the big city is their unhealthy lifestyle. As discussed in previous columns, your chances of getting infected by any kind of germ (bacteria, virus or parasite) depends on the functionality of your immune system and how fertile your body is for the germs. Is your internal defense army alert or lethargic? Is it well-practiced or has forgotten its job? Is your blood fertile ground for the virus? What comes to mind when you think of city life? Fastfoods, soda, sugared food, highly-processed food and drinks. Neon lights, “good time”, pollution, stress. All the come-ons for the virus… and other diseases.
Well, we thank covid-19 for cutting short our momentary “good time”. We are back to walking more, staying home, planting edible plants not décor, cooking at home instead of eating out, etc. But what happens after lockdown? Can we go back to our old lifestyle as if nothing happened? Will we lockdown while waiting for a vaccine or treatment from the factory? What if another mutant germ is born? Take note that there are “more viruses than stars of the universe” (nationalgeographic.com). Will we again lockdown?
We have slowed down the spread of disease because we stayed at home, well, most people anyway. Meaning most of us are not yet exposed to the virus. And if you have read our previous column, this means we are not immune to it yet. So we cannot just open the gates and say “Yahoo! We are free again!”. But then again, we cannot afford to stay home forever. There is work to do to earn a living otherwise government will have to feed us, clothe us and provide for our basic needs. What government can do this?
We could learn from the Singapore experience. When they were flattening their curve, they had a surge and they discovered that this came from congested dorms for migrant workers. Congestion, stress, travel. And we learn from our local and global experience. Covid-19 was not born in a day. It had a long gestation period- we don’t know exactly when but it had elder siblings – the first one was the Spanish flu virus that caused the flu pandemic in 1918-1919. This virus also spread because of the travel of soldiers, congestion in camps and unhealthy food and stress of World War 1. The second sibling was the swine flu virus in 2009. Now this. It seems the age gap is narrowing. We seem to be breeding mutant viruses faster. Yikes!
We have cemented every space that we stay in and every space that we walk on. You see, our feet and shoes shouldn’t get dirty. We enclose every space that we go to – even when we are playing… so even in far away villages, we have these open gyms. You see, we don’t want to get wet or sunburned. My skin! In the name of access and convenience, we build and cement roads to accommodate our cars and cargo trucks from the factory, leaving out people who walk. My goodness, there are no sidewalks in many places! Where do they think people will walk? In the name of hygiene and sanitation, we have developed all kinds of germ killers. We don’t believe the natural order of things is the best for us. And yet we go to mass religiously and say “I believe…” We seem to shun nature but after experiencing an emptiness in our manicured homes, we long for it. So after cementing everything near us, we hop to a car or a plane to go to the mountains or the beach bringing our wasteful lifestyle and dumping our wastes there. We catch those wild beautiful creatures and cage them in our homes and zoos so we can ogle them at will. We catch viruses and bacteria and tinker with them in the laboratory. We want to reinvent the natural order of things. Don’t you think that we have become so insensitive and arrogant? What now? We don’t need to manufacture a medicine and vaccine for covid-19 because our Master Designer has already provided those for us. Please our dear Master Designer, give us the medicine for arrogance.***
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“Pride leads to destruction, and arrogance to downfall.” Proverbs 16:18
