By Alex P. Vidal
“If you look into your own heart, and you find nothing wrong there, what is there to worry about? What is there to fear?” – Confucius
PEOPLE panic because news about the Wuhan coronavirus or 2019 n-COV was sometimes being exaggerated and blown out of proportions like there was an imminent invasion of the extraterrestrial.
Fear of the unknown makes people think the world will turn upside down.
The mad rush to secure clinical masks to be worn in public wouldn’t have occurred if some incompetent health authorities did not scare the public that the coronavirus had quickly spread in the Philippines.
The truth is the Department of Health (DoH) has already assured the public it was “on top of the evolving situation” in as far as the novel coronavirus is concerned because of its surveillance system and close coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other national agencies.
The more we panic the more we think we have been infected by the virus.
It’s when we worry a lot that we inflict harm to our health.
We get sick not because of the coronavirus, but because of stress and psychosomatic, or a mental factor that causes internal conflict.
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What to do amid the global coronavirus scare is actually to maintain good hygiene by always washing our hands and taking a regular bath.
Pushing ourselves in a mad scramble to get the masks, I believe, will only be necessary for the DOH has declared that the virus has spread in certain areas.
Even Iloilo first district Rep. Janet Garin, a former DOH secretary, does not believe that wearing a mask can protect a person from being infected by the virus.
It can help if we also avoid crowded places especially those suspected to be the entry points of tourists from countries with known cases of the dreaded virus.
Much remains to be understood about 2019-nCoV.
The source of the outbreak and the extent to which it has spread in China are not yet known, according to the WHO.
While the current understanding of the disease remains limited, most cases reported to date have been milder, with around 20% of those infected reportedly experiencing severe illness.
Both WHO and China noted that the number of cases being reported, including those outside China, is deeply concerning.
A better understanding of the transmissibility and severity of the virus is urgently required to guide other countries on appropriate response measures, according to WHO.
WHO said it is continually monitoring developments and the Director-General can reconvene the International Health Regulations (2005) Emergency Committee on very short notice as needed. Committee members are on stand-by and are informed regularly of developments.
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EVEN if we suspend international flight arrivals in the Iloilo Airport, nothing can stop the virus from transferring from human to human if there were already warm bodies in Iloilo who have been infected prior to the global scare.
We’re referring to the tourists from China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, who have already arrived in the country weeks before the spread of the coronavirus reverberated all over the world.
Tourists who had spent their Christmas and New Year holidays in our beaches in Boracay, Palawan, Bohol, Zamboanga, among other tourist destinations in the country.
(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)
