Challenges of the Coronavirus

 

We are facing an immense challenge around the world. Everyone has to realize the danger and stay at home and practice strict hygiene. Thousands are dying- friends, relatives and many die alone. We are people with rational intelligence. Everyone is important and equal in dignity and rights and we have to respect all and give help and support so more will be saved.

 

During lock-down, together with family members, we can do practical tasks, forming bonds and showing others we care for them and love them. We can call our parents and tell them that we love them and thank them for giving us life and education and support so we can live a healthy meaningful life. Parents should call their children to say that they love them, too. In these challenging times, we all need to come closer in spirit with each other when we must practice social distancing.

 

There is economic damage and loss and many jobs are gone. Government can provide help. Let us consider ourselves more fortunate than the abandoned, unemployed, migrant workers, Filipinos among them, on the streets of Dubai and Doha or locked down in the industrial area of Doha. There, the COVID-19 infection is spreading out of control among the thousands of workers locked in and guarded by the military in their confined, overcrowded quarters. There is no hospital there. There will be a high death toll, and no one will know how many. The World Cup will be played over the bodies of the dead. For those too in other Middle Eastern countries, the Philippine Government must reach out through the Embassy and rescue them. They are in dire straits, a journalist told me over the phone.

 

Everyone in stay-at-home quarantine faces challenges. There will be stress and tension of close confinement, arguments will erupt and there may be violence and broken homes as a result. But the happy side for those who have lived isolated lives and are separated from family is that they will hopefully come together to talk and listen to each other and have a new family experience by sharing life stories and experiences and be united.

 

The other challenge of the lock-down is having the children at home all day with their parents if the parents are not in essential jobs. It is a great chance to spend quality time with the children and parents can get to know and understand and interact with them. They can do many things together: lessons, games, singing, chatting, playing music, cooking, watching movies or television together.

 

If isolated alone, read books. I recommend two of my own, Passion and Power, the story of my life in the Philippines, doing human rights work and fighting the sex mafia and their political backers for 46 years. A work that is still providing healing for the victims of child abuse through the Preda Foundation. If that is too heavy, try the reflective, thought-provoking novel, Ricky and Julie, an adventure story based on real events. Both are available on Amazon.com or I can send you a free copy as a gift, just send me an email.

 

There is a negative tragic side to the lock-down. Children who are victims of child sexual abuse by a parent or relative will be locked in the house or apartment with the abuser and will have little chance to escape and run on the streets and have no one to tell. These will be terrible times for them. Child protection agencies should open telephone hotlines where a child might be able to call for help. Preda Foundation has one: +63 9175324453.

 

Coronavirus challenges us to be compassionate and caring to suffering patients when sickness strikes. There is the physical pain of this dangerous flu, headaches and body pain. There is the emotional stress of not knowing if you or your parents or relatives have it, and if yes, will you or they survive? We need to let others know that love and support is there in abundance. We stand together in the face of this pandemic. It is the great leveller, the rich and the poor can get it. But the rich Filipino politicians have taken unfair privileges getting themselves tested when they had no symptoms and testing kits in short supply.

 

The homeless, are challenged above all. They are without family or friends, adrift on the streets, sleeping in doorways and underbridges. If they are crowded into shelters, the coronavirus will get them too. Many are already doomed. They need all the help the social services department can give.

 

The challenge is for slum dwellers to survive. They are the poorest and the most vulnerable. They are malnourished, have weak immune systems and cannot isolate themselves. In the teeming slums, social distancing is not possible where shacks and shanties, hovels and plastic shelters are crammed together. Many will die unknown, uncounted, until they gain herd immunity if ever. 

 

What a challenge it is for the doctors to stay free of infection. Many have died already because they lacked protective gear. They have to decide who will live and die when there are only a few ventilators in the hospital for too many patients in desperate need of the breathing apparatus. These are heartbreaking decisions to be made. A suffering priest in Italy got a ventilator as a gift from the parishioners but he gave it to a younger patient and the good priest died. That is a self-sacrifice worthy of a saintly person.

 

When there is no life-saving ventilator, for some it is like a death sentence. They die alone, isolated from friends or relatives, no one can come close- such is the contagious nature of this plague because it is an incurable plague that all of modern medical science and knowledge is unable to conquer. A vaccine is far off. Yet, despite the previous similar outbreaks like Avian flu and SARS, the world did not learn, it was not ready.

 

Taiwan and South Korea were prepared and acted quickly to impose lock-down and made millions of testing kits and has been and is testing everyone. They have efficient epidemic control centers since the SARS. They have isolated those positive for the infection and trace all with whom they had been in contact with and quarantined them, too. It worked and has the pandemic under control. They have shown the world how to do it. Will the world take the challenge and learn that prevention is infinitely better than cure? 

The Good and Bad Side-Effects of Coronavirus

The good side-effects we can see during this medical crisis brought about by the coronavirus is the love, concern and care shown by the dedicated caregivers, nurses and medical workers. It is phenomenal. The goodness and love of millions of humans has come shining through. There are neighbourhood help movements growing online. In Canada, an online network is helping the elderly, neighbours are helping neighbours. In Italy, people are singing from balconies to cheer up those in quarantine. People are changing to a healthy diet also.

Preda Fair Trade Dried Mango fruit with loads of Vitamin C and no chemicals are selling fast in the UK and Ireland. People are changing to a healthy diet to strengthen their immune system to fight off and prevent the flu and hopefully coronavirus.

The Preda dried mangos are available online for ordering if you can’t leave home. Go to the www.forestfeast.com online and ask a friend to do it. If you can go shopping to Tescos, Dunnes or Waitrose, you will find the Preda Dried Mangos there under the Forest Feast brand. Buy lots. All earnings from sales go to support the abused children rescued by Preda Foundation and protect them from the Coronavirus. You are doing good for all.

But the greatest good is the dedication of caregivers and medical workers. Eighty-year-old Elizabeth would not survive the coronavirus if not for Margi, her devoted caregiver. Everyday, Margi Gonzalez risks getting infected on her rounds visiting her many patients in the community center. She treats any sores, takes blood pressure and temperature and sees that they are comfortable, fed, and taking her medicine on time. Elizabeth and others are being monitored for the coronavirus after one member of the community tested positive. Thousands of caregivers like Margi are slowing the spread of the deadly contagious infection. She was a migrant from the Philippines to Britain.

There are many good people like Margi on the front line. Many are former migrants or refugees, who fled poverty, oppression, fear and suffering for a new, better life. Now the rich, developed nations benefit from their skills and service. That is a positive result of a sad history of human rights violations and injustice. Margi was marked as a protest leader and fled the death squads employed by a mining firm to quell the protest against the mining corporation taking over their farmland.

That is the paradox, the poor flee as migrants or refugees the hardship caused by the greedy multinational corporations supported by their governments. They exploit the natural resources of poor nations in cahoots with the local corrupt ruling families. These three are the corrupt players behind every conflict. They drive the poor to become migrants and refugees. They in turn become the caregivers of the nation that exploited and harmed them.

Another positive outcome of the disastrous impact of the coronavirus is the lock-down and restricted international travel. The end to cheap flights and the grounding of thousands of planes, strict screening, setting up roadblocks, demanding IDs, all has a positive effect. This helps to curb human trafficking of young girls and boys into Western countries from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. It is the modern slave trade that has hopefully been slowed.

In an overnight decree, governments banned any and all travel of most people, including the travel of sex offenders, pedophiles and sex tourists and paedophiles on child rape holidays. That is another kind of epidemic. There is no specific law against it. There should be. As the multinationals rape the land of its minerals, the rich paedophiles come and rape the children. Preda Foundation is fighting this and rescuing the child victims for healing. Preda Fair Trade helps us in this fight as serious as coronavirus. You can help, too.

The young girls and boys are lured into servitude with false promises of well-paid jobs by mafia-like networks. The victims are held in debt bondage and forced to work in the Philippines or rich countries for little or no pay. They are slaves, threatened with beatings and harm to their families in their home countries if they don’t cooperate and become slaves or sex workers. Preda Foundation rescues and heals many.

Thousands of descendents of Irish migrants are in the medical profession around the world now fighting coronavirus. From 1845 to 1849, starving Irish migrants fled from British colonial exploitation of Ireland and the famine that they caused and allowed. British politicians and families had taken Irish land by force and became rich. The Irish were impoverished. They fled as refugees and migrants to America.

The United States was then a land of freedom, hope and opportunity for the oppressed and the poor. Thousands of Irish fought and died in the civil war against slavery. Now, under Trump, it is a closed fortress ruled by an anti-migrant white supremacist clique incapable of responding strongly and correctly to the coronavirus pandemic and allowing it to spread.

We all are challenged to fight the coronavirus by avoiding all contamination by self-quarantine, hand washing, keeping social distance, and getting tested when protocols require. We must respect, honor and support those who are risking all to help us win.