Volume 1, Issue No. 36
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
. . . . . A community service of The Filipino Web Channel (TheFilipinoWebChannel@gmail. com) and the Philippine Village Voice (PhilVoiceNews@gmail.com) for the information and understanding of Filipinos and the diverse communities in North America . . .
Our latest as of Monday, April 6, 2020
~ The immensity of coronavirus disease is hard to comprehend. When it affects over a million people and causes the death of thousands, we beseech divine intervention to complement what science may have in store to defeat it. As we've been reminded all this time, a fundamental solution also rests on us, on people adhering to rules and following regulations.
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CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC
The Contagion of Our Lifetime
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
“The world will overcome the pandemic in unity of hearts through prayer.” ―
TORONTO - Before COVID-19 (or coronavirus disease 2019) surfaced and entered our vocabulary, I had no concept of what a pandemic was, or what constituted a pandemic. It was an abstract idea as far as I was concerned.
Its dimension was beyond my grasp. I had known only epidemics of infectious diseases such as influenza and tuberculosis, which are common in the Philippines, from covering the health beat as a staff reporter for The Manila Chronicle (now defunct) many years ago. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrIFXOV-7mU).
But a pandemic in real terms? I had no knowledge at all.
I could not imagine how big pandemics are. My understanding was limited, very much limited, until the number of cases counted by the thousands, then by the hundreds of thousands, and now over one million.
The one pandemic I learned from reading historical accounts was the Spanish flu of 1918 which lasted two years from January 1918 to December 1920, infected 500 million people and killed anywhere from 17 to 50 million people. (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu).
At that time, many of us had not existed yet. Maybe our parents had not been born either. Which makes the current coronavirus disease (COVID-19) the contagion of our lifetime.
Actually, the more relevant to us in understanding pandemics are those that occurred after the 1918 flu. There's the Asian flu, which came in 1957 or 39 years after the Spanish flu.
"It (Asian flu) was first reported in Singapore in February 1957, Hong Kong in April 1957, and in coastal cities in the United States in summer 1957. The estimated number of deaths was 1.1 million worldwide and 116,000 in the US," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Ten years later, the pandemic by an influenza A (H3N2) struck. First noted in the United States in September 1968, it has claimed the lives of an estimated one million people worldwide and about 100,000 in the US. Most excess deaths were in people 65 years and older.
"The H3N2 virus continues to circulate worldwide as a seasonal influenza A virus," according to CDC.
In 2009, a novel H1N1 influenza (flu) virus emerged to cause the first flu pandemic in 40 years. "The 2009 H1N1 pandemic was estimated to be associated with 151,700 to 575,400 deaths worldwide during the first year it circulated. This H1N1 virus has continued to circulate seasonally to this day," the CDC said.
When I first heard (on March 11) Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, called the disease pandemic, it gave me the creeps, especially after he described it as the "first pandemic caused by a coronavirus".
He cautioned: "Pandemic is not a word to use lightly or carelessly. It is a word that, if misused, can cause unreasonable fear, or unjustified acceptance that the fight is over, leading to unnecessary suffering and death".
A pandemic, says the WHO, is the worldwide spread of a new disease. It is "an epidemic occurring on a scale that crosses international boundaries, usually affecting people on a global scale". In other words, the disease is an epidemic many times over, except that it has crossed borders and becomes boundless. Either one is terrifying.
From Wuhan, China, where it was first identified in December 2019, the disease has leapfrogged to places far and wide. At the latest tally, COVID-19 has affected 204 countries and territories around the world.
As of this posting (April 6, 2020), confirmed cases totaled 1,289,380. The number of deaths stood at 70,590. The statistics are culled from Johns Hopkins' Coronavirus Resource Center in Baltimore, Maryland.
After exposure to COVID-19, symptoms (such as cough, fever, difficulty breathing, pneumonia in both lungs) may take up to 14 days to appear, "the longest known incubation period for this disease," says Canada Public Health Services.
As of April 6, Canada has listed 15,494 cases, 2,942 recovered, and 280 deaths. The province of Ontario has 4,347 with the addition of 309 new cases, 132 deaths, and 1,624 resolved cases. The city of Toronto has 1,232 cases, 27 deaths, and 69 recovered. (Copyright 2020. All Rights Reserved).
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