Crises certainly bring out the best and the worst in people. The latter is revoltingly clear in the hoarders who appropriate more than they need, knowing full well there’s an entire community outside of their family—especially the poor who rely on daily wages and certainly cannot afford to hoard anything. And no, protesting that “I’m only doing this for my family” doesn’t cut it in this time of worldwide concern, because the smallest unit will cease to exist once society in general breaks down. As that succinct Facebook meme pointed out, you can’t sanitize yourself and live in a world where everybody else is infected because you cleaned out the alcohol, dummy.
The good part is that there is indeed good, especially in the heroic front liners confronting the disease head-on. Top of the list: The doctors and nurses in emergency rooms, hospitals and clinics attending to and caring for patients diagnosed as positive for COVID-19. These health professionals are putting themselves in danger by doing so, but soldiering on because it’s their job.
One doctor reported that some patients remain stubborn, in denial, and even offended when their attending nurses and doctors wear masks. It’s the height of inconsideration. It would do well for us to realize that these health care workers also have families they have to be separated from in order to serve society. So, thank you.
A similar shoutout to doctors and scientists doggedly doing research to diagnose and address COVID-19. There was general rejoicing when Dr. Raul Destura and his team at the University of the Philippines-National Institutes of Health developed cheaper local COVID-19 kits. An appeal for support signed by Dr. Mediadora Saniel, chair of the UP Medical Foundation, and Dr. June Lopez, vice president of TOWNS (The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service) Foundation, has been posted to help raise funds to speed up the validation of the kit in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, and especially to purchase critical personal protection equipment for the testing teams, and later, to allow access to such kits by the poor. For more information, you can email [email protected]. A group of Chinese-Filipino businessmen has already committed funds. So, thank you to Dr. Destura, the scientists, the fundraisers and the donors.
We’re also grateful to the working folks who are helping us keep a sense of normalcy, but have had to deal with panicking Filipinos. To supermarket cashiers who get yelled at by hoarders who won’t take no for an answer (“Bakit hindi pwede isang kahon?”, “Bakit ang haba ng pila?”—hello); to drugstore clerks trying to explain to irate senior citizens that, hindi po, you cannot buy more than a month’s worth of medicines right now; to the staff of restaurants and banks that are staying open, albeit with a skeleton staff, so people can still cautiously step out of their homes for errands and transactions so the economy won’t completely grind to a halt: Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
When this is over—we’re Filipinos, of course we will overcome—you, dear front liners, can look back on COVID-19 and know that you did your best for your country and people—while the hoarders can sit with their bottles of alcohol and contemplate what selfish, awful human beings they are. —Alya B. Honasan
