By Joel B. Belinan
As we are about to say goodbye to this pandemic year of 2020, it is good to look back this past year. It might be the most difficult one in recent memory for the entire human society. Yes, not only for this country but the entire global village. Everyone has a story to tell to the incoming generations especially those of us who almost reached the end of their lives.
As for me, this pandemic really showed that, indeed, in situations such as these, we the poor are the worst affected. Some may not agree with me but I am thinking in terms of the widespread impact to humanity. This Covid-19 pandemic has the widest impact, even wider than that of the second World War, especially to the poor.
The last global war may have had more casualties to date, but we don’t know yet as Covid-19 is still causing a lot of deaths everywhere.
This pandemic also exposed the real capabilities, personalities and weaknesses of our global leaders. Number one who fell victim was Pres. Donald Trump of the United States. While the US economy seemed to have rebounded back during his presidency, his mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis caused his downfall. President-elect Joe Biden beat him in last month’s election.
Closer to home, the most idolized president that ever occupied Malacanang remains very popular despite what appears to be the bungling of the country’s Covid-19 response. As posted on Facebook, most of our neighbors are getting ready for the Covid-19 vaccine, some might start their mass vaccination next month; and yet the Philippines, courtesy of Sec. Francisco Duque, lost the chance to have a considerable number of vaccines so vaccination could start as early January 2021. Many opine that the bungling of the opportunity was intentional as he was ordered to get only the Chinese vaccine for our country…… for obvious reasons. What is infuriating is that the so called Inter-Agency Task Force added the rule of mandatory wearing of face shields in all public places which is looked upon by many as the only means to dispose the stocks of importers from China, the friend of the current Malacanang occupant. Nowhere in the entire world were face shields made a mandatory requirement to slow down the Covid-19 spread.
This year also saw the sports sector everywhere in the world got completely disrupted. Not only the 2020 Tokyo Olympics’ postponement but it also totally stopped sports events as we knew it for at least 3 months. Of course, common fitness and gym routines like ours at the park were completely stopped from the middle of March to May as the whole world went into hard lockdown.
Our country slowly opened up the economy but not yet for foreigners and still we see granular lockdowns in almost every corner despite the World Health Organization’s discouraging of lockdowns.
We can go on and on but I would just like to end this piece by thanking our publisher and editor-in -chief for his patience in dealing with articles in this Outdoor Bound corner that made my coming back to writing possible, although on a part time basis. Thank you, sir. ** Happy Holidays Everyone.
