Vaccine Heist: The World Needs Vaccine to Combat the Coronavirus Pandemic

Photo from The Buzz Paper

By Chester B Cabalza

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of an Academic 
(Copyright @ 2020 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved).

Caveat! This story is just a figment of my imagination inspired by the worldwide phenomenon series La Casa de Papel (taking off from their successful heist in the Royal Mint of Spain and cliffhanging end at the Bank of Spain). The fiction follows the story on how to find the vaccine for COViD-19! 

PART 1

(Indoor) The professor lectures the gang about the trends on coronavirus pandemic using data science showing to them the number of infections, recoveries and deaths. 

Inside the dark room of an Antonio Gaudi’s look-a-like abode in Barcelona, standing elegantly in his nerdy-looking yet charismatic composure, he holds a laser pointer, directly looking at Lisbon.

Flashes of images of beautiful and ugly scenes on how he has intimately bonded with Oslo, Moscow, Berlin, and Nairobi (all dead) run through his thoughts.

Distracted. Annoyed. Perspiring.

Lisbon: Sergio, what’s going on? (Baffled and concerned).

Professor: China has won the game! (Serious as usual as he pointed on the screen showing the origin of the virus in Wuhan).

He steals a look at Toyko. In her stylish attire, intently eavesdropping to him, her curious mind walks fast through the pandemic events – the Chinese whistle blower physicians who died of the COVID-19 and how they were silenced by the politburo. Different outbreaks that hit the world from 1720 Great Plaque of Marseille, 1820 Cholera, 1920 Spanish Flu, to the 2020 Coronavirus.

There’s a slow sounds of chants of Bella Ciao playing on air while imageries of people wearing of masks, physical distancing, and news reportage on major hit countries from South Korea, Italy, Spain, Iran, Nigeria, Australia, Peru, and the United States are fast forwardly shown on the screen.

The gang’s intense guise upsets neither Manila nor Stockholm. Both of them are listening conscientiously to the professor while he explains the uptrend death toll in the Western World compared to the downtrend in Southeast Asia. 

Manila: Indonesia and the Philippines have more than 200 deaths each and less than a hundred each in Malaysia and Singapore. But the rest of the countries in Southeast Asia have zero fatalities.

Professor: Exactly! Mainly because they are friends with China, or they may have known about the outbreak, beforehand!

Looking at epidemiologic history, Southeast Asians are immune from Chinese, Indian, and Arab diseases through early trading before Portuguese and Spaniards arrived to colonize the region. They may have also shared the same DNA with the people in the Pacific and Madagascar in Africa because of the navigation drive of Austronesians southward!

Denver: That’s absurd, eh! How can you say that in an epidemic? The elderly and adults get infected and are dying! You may get killed on streets in Metro Manila if you disobey the quarantine orders, there’s a lockdown, professor! (Berated wearing a poker face minus his choking laughter).

Professor: I know Denver! 2.6 billion Citizens of planet Earth or one third of the world’s population is living on a global lockdown! Can you imagine India doing that? (He removes his glasses and wipes his teary-eyes).

Stockholm: Italy has more than 16,000 deaths, Spain has more than 13,000, France has more than 8,000, and UK has more than 5,000 as of April 6! These are first world countries. Many of the hard-working health workers in Western and Mediterranean European states are Asians; some of them are from the Philippines!

Denver: And the United States have more than 10,000 death tolls. Can you explain that, professor!? Is it about the presidential election and the Mexican wall?

Bogota: How did that happen? I thought the western world boasts of their sophisticated social medical system? Aren’t they prepared for a pandemic?

Professor: No! Because there’s no vaccine yet!

And the western world may have zero immunity to this novel coronavirus disease!

Angela Merkel pleads the Germans to think of it seriously. The killer enemy is unseen unlike what Europe saw in the two world wars and the Cold War! Boris Johnson suffered the virus and was placed in the ICU, even Prince Charles is positive! Giuseppe Conte, out of disenchantment, welcomed the help of Cuba and China! These are fucking Communist countries!

Bogota: We’re bank robbers and not scientists, professor?!

Helsinki: We may have operated Nairobi inside the Bank of Spain (sad and disgusted), but we’re neither surgeons nor virologists!

Palermo: Professor, ask Marsella he’s an animal rights activist! Right, Marsella? (Everyone laughs in concert while looking at Marsella at the back).

Marcella smirks at Palermo and ignores the joke.

Tokyo: We’re thieves for a cause, professor!

Lisbon: We’re not even experts on a pandemic! (Standing meters away from Sergio to observe physical distancing. The couple are staring at each other, consciously wearing face masks, to contain the transmission of the virus).

Professor: First wave of the outbreak occurred when the novel coronavirus went out from Wuhan and infected many overseas Chinese! The first case of Chinese death happened in the Philippines last February 9.  

Second wave deals on local transmissions in all corners of the world! That’s why we see around the world on how different national governments imposed interventions using enhanced community quarantine! 

Saudi authorities are using heat-sensing drones to monitor people on the streets. Tropical countries are praying that heat wave during the summer season will kill the virus, that's why they extended the quarantine. 

The minimum should be 40 days just like what Venice did during the bubonic plaque. London has the longest lockdown in six months in earlier plaques. Singapore may extend the lockdown until December this year for the survival of the Singaporean gene pool.

It’s still a lockdown just like a martial law! Military and the police will enforce it! Ordinances and emergency laws will be enacted following any typical lockdown!

Look, there are only four countries, mostly islands that are not affected yet by the pandemic!

North Korea shot down their first COVID patient to halt a local transmission against human rights violation. Mongolia isolated the French patient from the rest of the society to stop the spread of the virus and strictly closed borders.

The third wave happens when workers and students who are lockdown for many weeks and more than a month will go back to offices and schools! Many countries will neither flatten the curve nor squash the virus!

Japan and Sweden tried flexible interventions by giving freedom and compromises to their citizens but the virus bounced back even with strict cultural norms on washing of hands, wearing of masks, and physical or social distancing were observed!

Taiwan and New Zealand are doing well but WHO ignored their good practices!

The UN Security Council will call for unity and understanding coz even the organization is vulnerable to save its ass!

Member-countries will stop trusting each other and will wait for further cooperation. That’s a classic Waltzian scenario on anarchic world!

The five permanent members of the Council will ally differently with each other. China and Russia will have a stronger alliance, while the rest of the members will weaken their strengths until autocratic members will disrupt the world order into their favour forming a multipolar or bipolar world!

This is about political leadership!

Irregardless if a government is autocratic or democratic, the virus is merciless, unforgiving and deadly!

Leaders will have to flex responsibly their powers!

National coffers will be drained due to lockdown. It will create a global recession that only well-prepared great powers will dominate the economy in the near future!

Front line workers, mostly from the health sectors will be heralded heroes for their courageous will to combat the disease but politicians will seize every opportunity to show off their leadership style!

Most of them will get sick of the virus! Others will get sick of power!

The world will maintain an organized chaotic system as we will see a gargantuan landscape of power rivalry.

Poor families will go hungry!

The middle class will have the privilege of staying at home, working from home, become obese and bored, but once the lockdown will not be sustained, they will revolt online against abusive leaders!

Few rich families will become philanthropic but most of them will preserve selfishness to save their own interests!

Now, the fourth wave will occur when all the ports around the world will be opened up again. Tourists, diplomats and businessmen will freely travel the world and become carriers of COVID, either they become symptomatic or asymptomatic.

Traditional media will suffer large-scale and will use a pint size warm-bodied courageous personnel to cover the pandemic! They will largely focus on the survival of their own patients and how will local governments respond to the basic needs of their citizens. Without them knowing that an autocratic great power will seize international media; and information warfare will begin to disrupt the system. 

Video conferencing systems will get malwares or electronic viruses and cybersecurity will become a global threat.

Great power rivals will flex muscles and will use the virus as leverage! It will happen, it’s happening now!

Tokyo: What’s the point of all this fuzz, professor? (Recklessly exasperated and bored!)

Is there a World War 3?! Will there be zombies just like in movies?! Is it the Armageddon?!

Should we call the Pope and Dalai Lama?!

How do we solve it professor? (Agitated).

Rio: Many frontline health workers are dying… (Distressed and dismayed).

Lisbon: We need to find the vaccine! Right, professor!

Professor: Eighty percent of tested with mild COVID infections recover. They need self-quarantine, medications, and they can isolate themselves at home. Fifteen percent suffer severe cases where they need to be hospitalized. The doctors will tell them if they need to be confined in the hospital or recuperate at home. Only five percent will be placed in the Intensive Care Units – they will fight for their lives. But most of them will die!

Many of the dying patients are elderly and men. It’s gender-biased. Women will survive well in a pandemic (Looking at directly to the eyes of Lisbon, Tokyo, Stockholm, and Manila. While Palermo and Helsinki meet eye-to-eye to question it).

Everyone will be vulnerable. Our bodies will need this immunity. It’s like herd immunity for evolutionary process! The world is biologically and socially evolving! Our human species is best challenged at the moment to rule the world while Mother Nature regenerates! Even mammals will have to evolve!

Manila: It’s the survival of the fittest! Stronger gene pool wins over those with weaker immunity!  

Tokyo: So, where are we going to steal the vaccine?

Professor: Scientists from China, South Korea, Australia, the US and Europe have already copied blood samples and swabs from coronavirus patients, mild and severe, symptomatic and asymptomatic, just to produce the vaccine!

Scientists are choosing which of the four retroviral medicines for anti-HIV and anti-malaria will be used for the COVID-19! WHO will do sampling test cases and will prescribe the most efficient and affordable drug to become the standard vaccine for all the patients worldwide!

This pandemic will certainly show us a plethora of perspectives on how to solve this doomsday riddle!

We have to look at all the angles in geopolitics, world security, economy, technology, religion, medicine and science!

We will use science!

Lisbon: Science! (and she moves her hands to do a sign of the cross and prays silently).

Professor: We are the Resistance! We need to find the vaccine! Mass produce it to save humanity! 

(TO BE CONTINUED)…

Multipolarity demands a world leader, and it’s not China

Photo from Shanghaiist

By Chester B Cabalza and Mark Payumo

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of Academics 
(Copyright @ 2020 by Chester B Cabalza and Mark Payumo. All Rights Reserved).

The global race to combat the new coronavirus pandemic shows a litmus test at how China can become the world’s leader. The emerging great power transforms into a powerhouse that hypes philanthropic acts in many ill-stricken global cities, endowing soft power that backfires into soulless information warfare and untrustworthy COVID-19 testing kits, amidst the open-ended Armageddon. 

In December 2019, Chinese physicians breached China’s firewall, twitting messages in micro-blogging WeChat about the virus from Wuhan City. The whistle-blower doctor Li Wenliang, raised the red flag of the possible outbreak but ignored by the Chinese politburo, even before the World Health Organization declared the epidemic as a ‘global health emergency’ before it was elevated in the shortest span of time as a pandemic.  

Neither the world faults nor discriminates the Chinese people of the blame-game and racism borne out of universal abhorrence or rancour to China on COVID-19. The absence of Xi Jinping’s transparency on the early spread of the unforgiving virus has led to the large scale mutation of the coronavirus, crippling global economy in lockdown, yet resulting to unstoppable transmissions infecting more than a million people and killed over 50,000 patients worldwide, accelerating on its third and fourth wave devastations. 

Orchestrated bandwagon

Despite Washington’s flexed global military power, the United States’ overconfidence and Donald Trump’s complacence to quell the virus fell out to indispensability by politicizing and weaponizing the Chinese virus. The massive spike of American confirmed cases, the planet’s highest caseload, roll out at the veins of its financial district becoming the new epicentre that succumbs to hundreds of death, recalling the identical soreness New York has experienced since 9/11.

Distressed G7 economies in Europe topped by Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, France and Germany temporarily surrendered its woes. It proclaimed the battle against the unseen evil as the worst catastrophe since the continent hit by two world wars. The great Chinese stage of spreading the virus orchestrated a bandwagon of the Old World to the rising phoenix, a contender to derive a multipolar world system.

Netizens in a borderless world have seen anarchy from their homes. It challenged western medical system’s advancement in curing the new strain of virus. In a contagion, not only social distancing has been required but a call for economic and political distancing from China. The Waltzian neorealist approach of ensuring affected nations’ survival from coronavirus pandemic re-enacts a security dilemma to derail China’s ascent in the theatrical stage.  

The bouncing effect of the novel coronavirus strikes concurrently that it contaminates again China, the world’s original epicentre, as nations follow various interventions and responses in surviving the pandemic. Ailing developed West frightens now recovering developing East as hubs of infection. While the U.S., Italy and Spain are hardly hit by the pandemic, grieving from unprecedented death tolls, the question of social mobility and economic inequality divides the world as it faces unprecedented economic recession.

The fatigue it brought to China’s balancing act limits cooperation created by fear and mistrust on relative gains and the possibility of dependence on China’s predicted primary role over the virus it has accidentally spread out to the world. The high cost of conflict and paranoia this pandemic may take undervalues the military prowess of any major powers, as this whole flux on non-traditional security on health, it still dispenses authority from major powers, as it may resist assistance from the lone superpower as it strives for its own survival.

China’s dismay of the global order

Long dissatisfied with the international order that the U.S. has set up since its ascension by becoming a superpower after the Second World War. China when it opened up as a sleeping economy in 1978 long appealed for multipolarity to achieve its own national strategic aims. While this might play well for other nations’ desire to have an equal voice in international fora, the diffusion of geopolitical leverage has an accompanying effect of eroding U.S. influence on the world stage, the major condition Beijing needs to advance its own interests.

But what these interests might mean for the world is gradually unravelling especially in the middle of the current pandemic. To be sure, Beijing intends to fill the vacuum that America failed to act as the world’s foremost superpower or at least to have an equal footing on its hard and soft powers.

The U.S. climbed as the world’s most ready of nations on the Global Health Security Index, but it failed its position during the COVID-19, becoming the new global epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic. As a respected global leader over the past seven decades, the U.S. wilfully acted on its benevolent principle of preparing and coordinating conscientiously for a global response crisis by championing a coalition among its allies to counter any disease outbreaks. 

Nonetheless the current tide of interventions and responses on the pandemic will apparently present a realistic China-centric one-act show in a globalized world capping a forceful diplomatic campaign in combating the virus. The medical pandemonium has generally altered the global macroeconomic directions that set plurality of supervision of the world’s economy and trade in a presumptive post-COVID-19 scenario.   

Beijing’s success lies not on the spread of the microscopic lethal virus that it has spread around the world but as to what may happen to Washington and its western counterparts now bend on cooperation with China’s gradual recovery.

Multipolarity demands a new leader, but definitely it’s not China but a concert of great powers. This sobbing challenge is only an upgraded version of an interconnected world where the pandemic demonstrates resilience of our interdependence. It will somehow brighten the U.S. that it will need a new strategy to maintain its global position.

Will the Philippines survive the coronavirus pandemic?

Photo from Pharmaceutical Technology

By Chester B Cabalza

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of an Academic 
(Copyright @ 2020 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved).

From the almost 110 million Filipinos - there are 501 infected cases, 33 deaths, and 19 recovered patients today from the unforgiving coronavirus pandemic. The rapid spread of the COVID-19 in the Philippines is reshaping our tenacity to reform one of Southeast Asian nations’ poor yet elitist health care system.

Recent uptrend data of the dead and infected patients, whether tested asymptomatic or symptomatic disease, present susceptibility among Filipino elderly, frontline professional and overseas workers, and mostly the middle class in urban areas based from medical bulletin.

Historically, Filipino ancestors coped well with epidemics and did not suffer demographic collapse when the Spanish conquistadors colonized the Philippines, unlike the Aztecs and Native Americans had to agonize from the dreadful scourge of Spain’s microscopic secret weapon of small pox outbreak. 

The European disease of smallpox atrophied indigenous peoples’ numbers in the New World during the infancy of western exploration in 15^th century. The absence of natural immunity to smallpox of the Aztecs annihilated their population. Three centuries after, it was only in that period the first virus epidemic had ended through a revolutionary vaccine discovered by British physician Edward Jenner.

Studies showed that Filipinos in pre-Hispanic times previously acquired immunity to diseases through trading contacts with the Chinese, Arabs, and Southeast Asians. But the tropical Philippines’ collective disease history may suggest that Filipinos had more in common with Austronesians in the Pacific islands than in mainland Asia, and here comes the crusade in the current human-induced disaster of the coronavirus pandemic.

The COVID-19, now touted as a pandemic by the World Health Organization, offer a plethora of perspectives where local political culture matters in mitigating the deadly virus. The Philippines’ young population also suffers the curse of coronavirus with more senior citizens falling down, although below the global average of 3.5% of mortality rate, even with a strict call for a viral regional and in due time a national lockdown.

Recent call of the executive branch in the Philippines to give President Rodrigo Duterte additional power is in question but time is of the essence in saving more lives. Tightening of our national borders in all frontiers without the declaration of national emergency is a bravado act in itself for anti-pandemic work in an effort for an all-out campaign against the coronavirus to flatten the curve given a decrepit state of public health system in the Philippines.

Rapid urbanization and population explosion in current globalized world, in which the Philippines is guilty of the post-modern pains, made more emerging diseases susceptible nowadays as the rich and poor succumb to its terror reign. Thousands of viruses continue to evolve and mutate, adapting from patterns from animal-to-human to human-to-human transmissions.

The coronavirus pandemic that started from China has dramatically affected the world in virtually only few months and the giant neighbour for some geopolitical reasons now a close friend of the Philippines battles for its survival as well. It may be prematurely construed that the COVID-19 disease born from Wuhan in China is rapidly killing Europeans and Americans at a fast rate, perhaps due to zero natural immunity to the new and mutated virus.

A bouncing effect or recirculation process may occur that it may contaminate again the original epicentre if not adequately contained. The West now frightens the East as hubs of infection while Italy and the United States grieve from unprecedented rising death tolls, the biggest blow from unseen enemy after the two world wars. Out of fear, travellers from old and the new worlds are forcibly barred from entry or obliged to mandatory quarantine in many lockdown Asian cities.   

A courageous complete bloc access from hot spot countries of the COVID-19 rising fatalities is possible for Metro Manila if containment fails after the enhanced community quarantine. Closest to our geopolitical region, a grim yet unrealistic scenario can be done following modern hermit kingdom North Korea of locking down with no coronavirus infection yet or Mongolia’s sole infected case may be emulated if complete bloc access shall be enforced properly by the military and law enforcers. 

A month of enhanced community quarantine may not be enough despite the Philippines’ fragile economic resiliency. The world certainly copied Venice’s legal remedy of trentino (30 days) but increased the forced isolation of infected sailors to quarantino (40 days) where the medical word quarantine has been coined. But Italy aches in deep sorrow as the new epicentre of coronavirus pandemic nowadays as Cuban physicians arrive to help them combat the selfish virus.  

London lockdown and practice of staying at home for seven months occurred during the Great Plague of 1665, becoming the longest outbreak in human history. The English folks painted red roses in front their house doors, even writing a plea for forgiveness. Mass graves became a common practice to decontaminate the fallen community.

At that time when the Americans occupied the Philippines, the US government established the Culion Leper Colony, a former leprosarium located in Palawan, to get rid of leprosy in the archipelago. It was proposed as the sole method known at that time to isolate existing cases and gradually phasing out the disease from the population, although it offered patients to receive adequate care and medical treatments.

Today Filipinos’ mobility has been made easier by the presence of low-cost airline carriers afforded by the moneyed and ever-growing middle class. The hyper-concocted world in current world health emergency also enabled infectious agents, like a constantly mutating virus, to multiply rapidly and spread unpredictably. A significant percentage of local COVID-19 cases involve a lot of traveling, either in business or leisure.

With proper respect to anonymity and privacy of persons under investigation and infected cases, majority of stricken-ill and death toll of the COVID-19 patients in the Philippines come from financially capable socio-economic bracket. Most of them were confined and quarantined in high-end hospitals and reside from gated subdivisions in the metropolitan, mostly from Quezon City in Metro Manila. Self-confessed asymptomatic patients who underwent mandatory self-quarantine were senators and popular actors. 

Question on social mobility and inequality may hinder uncertainty surrounding the outbreak of the coronavirus disease in the country. As poor Filipino families in informal settlements rely to prayers and strong natural body immunity system, so as not to acquire and get infected by the deadly virus.

The Philippines is still seen as a country vulnerable to the COVID-19 with increasing number of infected cases. Now that major cases are found outside China, affecting particularly major African, European and Middle East cities, driving xenophobia and national lockdown, the Philippines and other global governments should craft new and clever measures by putting right policies in place to contain the pandemic coronavirus outbreak while many scientists still race to find vaccines to cure the disease, even with the availability of more than 60 kinds of alternative treatments and diagnostics shared worldwide.

Elderly, middle class, urban dwellers more susceptible to the COVID-19

Phto from India Today

By Chester B Cabalza and RJ O Taduran

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of Academics 
(Copyright @ 2020 by Chester B Cabalza and RJ O Taduran. All Rights Reserved).

The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus in the Philippines is reshaping our tenacity to reform the country’s poor yet elitist health care system. But recent uptrend data of the dead and infected patients, whether tested asymptomatic or symptomatic of the COVID-19, apparently show increasing cases among Filipino elderly, frontline professional and overseas workers, scholars and politicians in urban areas – mostly coming from the middle and upper classes echelon of the society.

The COVID-19, now touted as a pandemic by the World Health Organization, offer a plethora of perspectives where local political culture matters in mitigating the deadly virus.

The success of Asian tiger economies in containing the coronavirus outbreak, maintaining a downtrend number of newly infected cases around Northeast Asian region, has laid down holistic and proactive implementation of travel restrictions on passengers coming to-and-from China, originally the world’s epicentre, despite massive economic loss of major aviation hubs as the world gradually plummets to global recession caused by the latest catastrophe.

In particular, quick responses from the Central Command for Epidemics magnifying a clear health security policy resulted to smarter governance corresponding aggressively in coming up with pragmatic school and work policies, innovative national crisis planning and civil protection systems by cautiously reducing the feeling of abandonment, social inequality and mistrust from governments.  

Ageing Population

As Italy suffers the curse of coronavirus, surpassing the global average of 3.5% of mortality rate, even with a strict call for a viral national lockdown, the favourite Mediterranean holiday tourist spot replaced China as the new epicentre of the pandemic. A developed nation with highly sophisticated socialized healthcare system and part of the Group of Seven (G7) economies, hardly hit by grave fatality which can be attributed to its elderly population who are susceptible to the virus.

The world’s populace is ageing. Fearless forecast by the United Nations predicts that one in six people will turn 65 years old by 2050. The spike in coronavirus cases among geriatric patients worldwide over 60 years of age, heavily relying on pension and health cards, may succumb to the deadly virus in spite of complicated chronic conditions.

Apparent critical inflection of risk from this median age dies from the effect of uncured diseases. Eighty percent of COVID-19-related deaths reported in all of America came from the boomers’ generation, the same gene pool with the highest mortality in Wuhan City of China, birthing symptomatic vulnerability as age increases. Many of the diagnosed cases across continents are senior citizens who are at risk in a state of high stress and tension especially during winter and spring seasons.

Resolute efforts in containing the pandemic need a complete lockdown, whether regional or national, by limiting human-to-human interaction in transmitting the virus especially to the ageing population, obviously observed as the most vulnerable group. Restriction of movements of various modes of transportation in air, land and water should be monitored to lessen transmission to the elderly who heavily rely on public transportation in highly developed cities in Asia and Europe.  

Middle class vulnerabilities

Before local transmission plagued the country, persons under investigations and infected cases were tracked down based from foreign travel history. Diplomats, businessmen, globetrotters, and mostly repatriated Filipino crew members from the Diamond Princess Cruise ship docked in Japan became suspected carriers of first wave human-to-human transmission. By far, the coronavirus pandemic has now infected more than 300,000 people across the globe and killed more than 13,000 patients.

Filipinos’ mobility has been made easier by the presence of low-cost airline carriers afforded by the moneyed and ever-growing middle class. The hyper-concocted world in current world health emergency also enabled infectious agents, like a constantly mutating virus, to multiply rapidly and spread unpredictably. A significant percentage of local COVID-19 cases involve a lot of traveling, either in business or leisure.

Middle class activities such as mass entertainment and sports gatherings were temporarily shut down while various global government advice their respective citizens on staying at home. Enforcement of patrol border and employment of social distancing measures throughout these trying times of generational pandemics make sense to halt annihilation of human population based from best practices considered from humanity’s pandemic medical history during the Spanish flu in 1918 and the H1N1 in 2009.

Marshall McLuhan’s global village has realized the escalation of contagious and emerging infectious diseases brought by the ill-effects of globalization.

The novel coronavirus explicitly has intensified on how Filipino generation X, millennial and gen-Z can utilize technology and data sciences’ interconnectedness giving mandatory online classes for students under community quarantine and set employees’ convenience of working from home in a skeletal workforce to many affected metropolises, now lockdown, where privileged members of the middle and upper classes can enjoy the perks of comfort in large-scale efforts to contain the COVID-19.

Urban space and warfare against an unseen enemy

The influx of city-migration and overpopulation of seven billion people on Earth expose the failure of urban planning to the incubation and widespread of malignant viruses. Contamination and sanitation in major cities are prelude to pandemics caused by human-induced disasters.

Recent implementation of the enhanced community quarantine in the largest Luzon Island, populated by almost 60 million Filipinos, have seen innovative guidelines contested by local and national leaders. But the availability of multifaceted and multi-platform news stories on social media in sharing rapid responses and information dissemination, empowered urban dwellers against ignorance, racism, and blame-game of the COVID-19.

The call for mass testing of every Filipinos, whether or not testing result will turn into positive or negative, remains a big challenge to the government due to limited availability of mass-produced testing kits, either locally made or imported. 

With proper respect to anonymity and privacy of PUIs and infected cases, majority of stricken-ill and death toll of the COVID-19 patients come from financially capable socio-economic bracket. Most of them were confined and quarantined in high-end hospitals and reside from gated subdivisions in the metropolitan, mostly from Quezon City in Metro Manila. Self-confessed asymptomatic patients who underwent mandatory self-quarantine were senators and popular actors.  

Question on social mobility and inequality may hinder uncertainty surrounding the outbreak of the coronavirus disease in the country. As poor Filipino families in informal settlements rely to prayers and strong natural body immunity system, so as not to acquire and get infected by the deadly virus.

On the other hand, the deployment and mobilization of armies in city borders, notwithstanding the heroism of frontline law enforcers and health workers in dealing with pandemics, are commended for their tactical and strategic capabilities in protracted warfare, even highly encouraged to combat with unseen enemy in maintaining peace and stability in societies plagued with unknown fear and confusion.

The Philippines is still seen as a country vulnerable to the COVID-19 with increasing number of infected cases. Now that major cases are found outside China, affecting particularly major African, European and Middle East cities, driving xenophobia and national lockdown, global governments should craft new and clever measures by putting right policies in place to contain the pandemic coronavirus outbreak while scientists still race to find vaccines to cure the disease, even with the availability of more than 60 kinds of alternative treatments and diagnostics shared worldwide.

In the end, a united world that is far better insulated from disease threats sees a safer environment armed with bravery from fear of heath insecurities and certainly is here to challenge humanity’s value system to work together as a community of nations amidst this generation’s greatest trial of survival.

Novel Coronavirus (nCoV): Stop Blame to Racism but a Preservation to Gene Pool

Photo from The Sun

By Chester B Cabalza

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of an Academic 
(Copyright @ 2020 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved).

The Philippines placed second after China to suffer death toll from the 2019 novel coronavirus (nCoV). Of the 28 countries affected globally, many of it have temporarily banned flights from China to save own gene pool from contamination from deadly virus. Pragmatic nations even shut off China from air, sea, and land but not virtually. Against racial discrimination and political shenanigans, restrictions imposed, avoiding annihilation of humanity from the fatal germs.

Imagine if Singapore is wiped out from the virus, the innovative city-state shall no longer breed crazy rich Asians; or if Finland hesitates to close its doors from affluent Chinese tourists, we will lose the standard bearer of happiest people on Earth. Mongolia, a close nighbour to China, appears to have no patient yet; but if it happens, the descendants of Genghis Khan will be snapped in seconds.

Small and big nations, whether rich or poor, succumb to the vulnerability of the contagious and confusing outbreak despite the entire Hubei province and its epicentre in Wuhan city held in serious quarantine upsetting all of the provinces of the world's most populous and third largest country.

We know for a fact that widespread infectious diseases have profoundly changed the course of human history. A case in point, Spain's microscopic secret weapon in the form of smallpox epidemic, decimated the densely populated city of the Aztecs. There came the Black Death or bubonic plague that struck Eurasia, killing 20 million Europeans.

Hollywood visualized how contagion can become a global pandemic brought by a coronavirus-like in a star-studded movie in 2011 that originated from China caused by bats. Never believe in eerie similarities birthing armies of zombies from blockbuster pulp films caused by the noxious virus.

Early this year, Chinese physicians breached China's firewall when they started twitting messages about the virus from the human-induced epicenter while a brave migrant worker asked Xi Jinping's resignation on mishandling what the World Health Organization recently described as 'global health emergency'; but vigilant and concerned Chinese citizens got arrested. Or Chinese locals can be locked up for seven years if they slam their government or spread hoaxes in micro-blogging WeChat.

Nonetheless, local politics has not been spared from trending tweets of vitriolic ousting of our own leaders judged by netizens based from their reactions and policies about the current health security.

Hundreds are dying with rising confirmed cases across continents from lethal respiratory infection. Thai doctors use a cocktail of flu and HIV drug for treatment of stricken patients while Australian researchers have successfully cultured the coronavirus permitting fellow researchers to develop improved treatments and diagnostics for antibodies. Scientists alike race research on vaccines to cure the disease spoiling tension from overburdened medical system.

When the world bleeds from contagion the more we need doctors and health workers without borders. Never say that you can't do something, or that something seems impossible, or that something can't be done, no matter how discouraging or harrowing it may be; humans are limited only by what we allow ourselves to be limited by our own minds.

Exploring Historic Manila City, Philippines

Photographs by CBCabalza. Copyright © 2019 by Chester B. Cabalza. All Rights Reserved.

With the new mayor 'yorme' Isko Moreno in Manila, I joined my UP Diliman graduate students exploring the revived capital of the Philippines. From the National Museum (Fine Arts, Anthropology, and Natural History), we had lunch in Binondo - the world's oldest Chinatown, and proceeded to the historical Intramuros. Tried the famed bamboo bike around the cobbled stone pavements of the Spanish heritage walled city sightseeing Manila cathedral, San Agustin church, and chill at Casa Manila!

Advancing the Philippines-Russia Security Relations

Photo from Reuters

By Chester B Cabalza

Blogger's Notes:
Commentary of an Academic 
(Copyright @ 2019 by Chester B Cabalza. All Rights Reserved).

All is set for President Rodrigo Duterte’s visit to Russia on October 1-5 where he will speak before the Valdai Forum in Sochi about the theme “The World Order Seen from the East.”  It is recalled that jihadists and foreign terrorist fighters in Mindanao maneuvered a perfect timing to attack Marawi City in Southern Philippines last May 2017 while the Filipino leader flew to Moscow for a five-day state visit but was aborted within half day upon arrival in an attempt to reorient his country’s geopolitical alliance through his newly concocted Independent Foreign Policy created during his election three years ago carrying the mantra of “friend to all, enemy to no one” approach - a move to strengthen Philippines’ international defense and security cooperation with non-traditional allies including socialists China and Russia.

Initially President Duterte got star struck to Russian president Vladimir Putin in November 2016 at the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit meeting in Lima, Peru. When President Putin invited him to Kremlin, the Filipino firebrand leader ardently acknowledged the bromance on his first trip to Russia and personally met his “favorite hero”. That gave him the iota of realigning his ideological framework on working on a new world order with China, the Philippines, and Russia at the forefront against the world. For Russia’s appeasement, it has refrained from admonishing Duterte’s strategic acquiescence on war on drugs that led to thousands of extrajudicial killings.

At that time, one of his intentions of forging a formal defense accord with Russia addresses the need for securing precision weaponry to be used against Islamist militants in Mindanao. This major blow on Philippine internal security under Duterte’s regime apparently showed the massive impact of terrorism, an endemic security problem not just in the Philippines but within Southeast Asia. Terrorism turns out to be a common foe of the two Eurasian countries that gave more meaning to the nascent stage of friendship while fostering a mutually-beneficial and building a stronger defense and security relationship. Advancing into a strategic partnership, Russia disclosed to adamantly support the Philippines’ struggle against terrorism, drug trafficking, piracy at sea and other security sector issues. 

In over four decades of the Philippines-Russia relations, Manila sent for the first time its defense attaché to Moscow last May 2018 signifying the Philippines’ seriousness in pursuing defense and cooperation with Russia. It aimed at strengthening linkage with Russian military institutions and defense industry while monitoring the implementation of the Defense Cooperation Agreement signed with Russia in May 2017. This however ensured the synergy in the Philippines’ relations with Russia in the politico-security and defense arenas. As early as September this year, Moscow reciprocated the act of sending its defense attaché to Manila while setting a milestone for the diplomatic ties of the two countries paving a new channel of communication to enhance bilateral defense pact.

This renewed diplomatic ties is seen as multi-dimensional in keeping with the principles of sovereignty, non-interference and equality since Peter the Great laid down a strategy to explore the Far East via India and the Philippines to establish trade links in 1722. Today, the beautiful dive sites and pristine islands of archipelagic Southeast Asian Philippines have become favorite hubs among tourist Russians despite the absence of a direct flight from Moscow to Manila. Since 2013, the Philippine Department of Tourism has been participating in the Moscow Travel and Tourism Exhibition to strengthen existing relations by ensuring continued growth in the hospitality and tourism sectors. As Russia achieves an upper middle-income status from a mixed and transition economy since its fiscal reforms in 1990s, thereby aggressively expanding the privatization of its energy and defense-related sectors, Filipino household service and skilled workers are in demand in the former USSR. However, Russia wants to limit the agreement from government-to-government negotiations in which the Philippines has yet to comply considering that labor organizations in Manila are not abreast to this kind of set-up.

Meanwhile, the highlight of the visit is the honorary doctorate degree to be conferred by the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations or the MGIMO to the Filipino leader, formerly a city prosecutor and mayor, before becoming the 16^th president of the Philippines. This conferment is an exception from his other state visits aimed at expanding and forging relations as a manifestation of his undefined independent foreign policy, thinking that the diversification of partnerships can recognize the growing interdependence among states that may contribute to the Philippines’ national interest and domestic agenda.

In November last year, the Philippines and Russia completed the plan mapping out joint military activities that paved way to the four-day friendly visit of three Russian warships docked recently in Manila last September 23. This military plan include high-level exchanges, port visits of navy vessels, reciprocal visits of staff and security consultants for military training exercises, people-to-people engagement and education exchanges. In the same way, a Philippine frigate made a historic trip to Vladivostok last year while Russian gray ships now make regular visits to the Philippines. It is only during the time of President Duterte that the two non-traditional countries have reached the peak of golden age of partnership while the Philippines sees Russia as a major strategic player in geopolitics, defense and security, and a good host to overseas Filipino workers.

The warming defense and security relations of the Philippines and Russia started from admiration to admission of Russia’s strategic role in global politics as the Philippines tries to spell out its diversified Independent Foreign Policy while at the same time Russia enjoys a foreign policy to retain its position as a major power in the multipolar security architecture of the world.