Scary events threaten our life

“Whenever there is a catastrophe, some religious people inevitably ask, 'Why didn't God do something? Where was God when all those people died?'”

—Tony Campolo

By Alex P. Vidal

THERE have only been two dominant and hottest topics at least in the Western Visayas region these past weeks: 1. seizures of illegal drugs and arrest of suspected traffickers; and 2. Wuhan coronavirus.

When we read the newspapers and the Internet, listen to radio, and watch TV’s prime time news, the novel coronavirus topic has refused to move away more than a week after it grabbed headlines around the world. 

It’s “made in China.”

Weeks earlier, we landed on the world map when Taal Volcano threatened to eviscerate from the face of earth a large portion of Luzon. 

The event was “made in the Philippines.”

The Taal uproar wasn’t a joke. It could have actually spelled our doomsday.

We were almost a cinch away from the kingdom come. Underwater volcanoes could spew hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which many scientists think caused the worst mass extinction in history 250 million years ago, which killed 90 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of land animals.

But there’s an upside even to this, according to Popular Science, the world’s largest science and technology founded in 1872: Bacteria and microorganisms thrive in these conditions, so there’s a good chance of life hitting the restart button. 

  

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THE virus attack. How quickly could a single supervirus spread to every single person on earth?

According to Popular Science, if it’s a particularly contagious virus, it would spread across the planet in a year.

“If it starts in New York, it’s going to be in London certainly within a week,” says Ira Longini, a biostatistician at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle who uses computer models to analyze how viruses globe-trot. “And from there, it will quickly travel to the rest of North America and Europe.” 

For Longini’s computer forecasts to become reality, though, certain conditions would need to be met.

First, it should be a strain of influenza. As anyone who has suffered through a bout of flu knows, it affects the respiratory tract, so sneezing and coughing make it easy to infect anyone within a radius of three feet (0.9 m). 

The virus must originate in a major city with plenty of airport traffic, to ensure officials are off the trail of the real megabug, says Andrew Pekosz, a virologist and immunologist at John Hopkins University.

The idea seems to freak him out. “With everybody expressing similar symptoms, we’d end up chasing, chasing, chasing, but always being a few steps behind, never really able to interrupt the spread.”

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Aside from volcanic uproar, viruses, super typhoons, tsunami, earthquake, there’s also the fear of asteroid strike, etcetera. Can we survive? 

A quick, disastrous change in earth’s climate could easily our terrestrial party early, according to the Popular Science.

The United Nations (UN)’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that, already, up to 70 percent of disasters worldwide are climate related, affecting about 2.4 billion people over the last decade.

If, as most scientists believe, global warming is set to escalate over the next century, drastic weather events like floods, droughts, and hurricane are likely to become ever more commonplace.

In the worst-case scenarios, this could lead to massive crop failures, shortages of drinking water, and widespread extinctions—including, perhaps, our own.

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Before boarding his flight from Inchon to New York City last night (February 3) via Korean Airlines, Rommel Leal, a Filipino-American who went home last month to watch the Iloilo Dinagyang Festival 2020 in Iloilo City, called me to ask if people here in the Big Apple were wearing the face masks. 

I told him there are few New Yorkers who wear masks but they’re mostly in the Chinatown areas in the Flushing in Queens, Canal in Manhattan, and the Sunset Park in Brooklyn.

Leal said when he left the Philippines, “about 90 percent of the people in Manila were wearing masks.”

“The Filipinos take the coronavirus seriously and they are in a state of panic,” Leal reported. “Many (China and Hong Kong-bound vice versa) flights have been cancelled.”

He promised to buy masks in Inchon and use them here in New York.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)

  

Let’s change our habits before it’s too late

“You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

By Alex P. Vidal

IS nature trying to send us a message that we must wake up and change our attitude toward the environment?

Some experts are saying that if we don’t know how to read the handwritings on the wall, “we must brace for more natural calamities” after the eruption of Taal volcano in the start of 2020 as we had been reportedly warned repeatedly not to harm our environment. God forbid.

These calamities may be in the form of super storms and flash floods which have been experienced even by highly industrialized countries in Asia and other economically robust countries in the west these past 10 years with horrific results.

It was Sir Francis Bacon who exhorted us to obey our nature if we wish to command it.

By obeying, it doesn’t mean we will not enjoy from its wealth.

By commanding, it doesn’t mean we will destroy it.

The laws of nature definitely are in consonance with our existence, thus there is no need to exploit and ravage nature for our whims and caprices.

There is no need to rape the environment for our own irrational selfishness and greed.

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The following are some of the ways in which man has upset nature’s balance and reduced our supplies of natural wealth:

1. Destruction of vast forest areas. Enormous quantities of lumber were taken from our forests for buildings, furniture, fuel, and other useful purposes.

But because of the apparent abundance of forests, lumbering practices were very wasteful. Little heed was given to the replanting of trees to keep our forests producing for the future.

2. Destruction of wild life. When forests are cut away, the homes of countless animals are destroyed, and these animals die.

The balance of nature has been upset at a vital point, and entire species may vanish as a result.

Added to this is the effect of needless trapping and shooting of animals for sport.

Examples of species made extinct or nearly extinct by man most particularly in America are: American bison (buffalo), antelope, passenger pigeon.

3. Reckless use of farm lands. Nature’s orderly processes keep soils permanently fertile.

But when man’s sole interest is to extract the maximum crop from his farm each year, regardless of the consequences, the soil soon loses its essential minerals and cannot support plant life at all. The soil, moreover, loosened and laid bare by the planting and harvesting of a single crop, and the wind and the rain easily carry it away.

4. Overgrazing of pasture lands. Sheep- and cattle-raisers, through lack of planning and foresight, have pastured their animals on the same land year after year.

Here, too, the result has been to lay bare the soil, so that it falls victim to erosion.

5. Pollution of streams. The dumping of sewage and industrial wastes into streams and rivers makes these waters unhealthy for water life.

The result is the destruction of large numbers of fish, oysters, and other valuable organisms.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)

Ilonggos always quick to extend help

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”

—William Shakespeare

By Alex P. Vidal

WHEN Iloilo was hit by calamities like the super typhoons “Yolanda” and recently “Ursula”, assistance came pouring in from other regions and provinces in the Philippines.

Because the world was watching, foreign assistance followed suit. 

Although the damages on agriculture and infrastructure were sometimes grotesque, the LGUs and the sectors directly affected could quickly bounce back to normal life because of the concern and empathy of those Good Samaritans—institutions and individuals.

Ilonggos have been both blessed and resilient that they were able to survive some of the worst calamities in recent memory.

And when it is their time to help, their countrymen can always count on them; Ilonggos know how to reciprocate a kindness and benevolence.

Thus it’s not a surprise why the Ilonggos were among the first and quickest to respond when Taal volcano spewed lava and plumes of ash since Sunday.  

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In Iloilo City, Mayor Geronimo “Jerry” Treñas has vowed to send financial assistance and other aid necessary for the people of Batangas affected by the volcanic eruption.

Once details of the assistance have been finalized by the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (CDRRMC) soon, the assistance will be sent “hopefully before the Dinagyang Festival highlights (January 25-26),” the city mayor was quoted as saying by the Philippine News Agency (PNA).

It was reported as of January 16 that more than 50,000 people have fled Taal volcano’s potential “explosive eruption.”  

An eruption could rain rocks and magma and set off a tsunami from the lake in which the volcano sits, volcanologists have warned.

Thick ashfall from the volcano has reportedly cloaked many towns in the Batangas province causing millions of dollars worth of damage to crops. 

Also clouds of ash were blown 62 miles to Manila, forcing hundreds of flights to be cancelled.

Cracks were reported to be emerging around the Taal volcano raising the likelihood of an imminent major eruption, according to scientists.

 Experts at the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology  (Phivolcs), which said the threat level from the Taal volcano south of Manila remained at level 4 on Tuesday (January 14)– one short of an active eruption. 

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Let’s hope the police will not taint the week-long Dinagyang Festival with the blood of suspected drug pushers and users now that the crackdown against the suspects has been tightened these past days as reported in the Western Visayas media.

A tough police official, Lieutenant Colonel Jovie Espenido, deputy director for operations of the Bacolod City Police Office (BCPO), who was assigned in Bacolod City on purpose of “wiping out” the remnants of drug syndicates there, was in the news most recently warning the traffickers that “they have only one month” saying “everything has an end.”

Any violent crackdown against any criminal element in the region will always have a spillover in Iloilo City since both the cities of Bacolod and Iloilo are inter-connected in many aspects.

While we laud Espenido’s no non-sense anti-illegal drugs campaign, it would be best if his timing wasn’t bad.

Why not eliminate all those dregs of society when there was no forthcoming important event that attracts visitors from other countries?

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)

Taal and our superstitious belief

“Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.”

—Voltaire

By Alex P. Vidal

ACCORDING to some anthropologists, supernatural beliefs gain strength in natural disasters.

Every time a disaster like the Taal volcano explosion occurs without an explanation, Filipinos attribute it to superstition.

The belief in omens and portents, often rooted in ancient cosmology, is widely held, even by the worldly and well educated. 

After all, Philippine culture cherishes lucky numbers, eschews sounds that can be misconstrued as the word for death and places great value in “gaba” or curse; we are also the No. 1 non-Chinese believers of feng shui, the practice of arranging furniture and buildings just so, to bring happiness and good health.

Some Manny Pacquiao fans even blamed his controversial defeat to Timothy Bradley to his decision to become a “born again” Christian and his refusal to wear the rosary, which he used to do when he was a Catholic.

The truth is there are scientific explanations why Taal volcano erupted, not because of our “sins” and other weird superstitious explanations.

Pacquiao actually won that first fight but the judges only reportedly erred in awarding the bout to Bradley who was badly clobbered in their rematch.

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One of the most famous catastrophes in European history was the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, in Portugal. 

The earthquake itself caused fires immediately, as well as a tsunami that arrived in about 40 minutes. All told, between 10,000 and 100,000 people died.

The question asked throughout Enlightenment-era Europe was, “What did Lisbon do to deserve such punishment?” 

There were some theories, including religion, sexual mores, and some more fanciful claims, but it seemed hard to believe that these could explain why Lisbon would be almost completely destroyed and Berlin, Paris, Prague, Vienna, and other capitals of sin would be untouched.

“Unless… what if there was no explanation? No one had done anything, good or bad, to cause it. The earthquake just happened,” points out Michael Munger of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE).

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Now, humans usually don’t like answers like that; we can’t plan, and we can’t identify patterns.

On the other hand, accepting that there may be no explanation, much less a blame-worthy action as cause, for events is a step toward thinking scientifically. 

In a way, the Lisbon earthquake was a great benefit to the cause of enlightenment. 

As John Hamer said,“One of modernity’s greatest achievements is the realization that natural disasters like earthquakes have nothing to do with us, that we need not see the wrath of Zeus in every thunderclap, the displeasure of Poseidon in every menacing wave. The origins of that realization are to be found in the smoldering ashes of Lisbon.”

Munger also warns that we see patterns where none exist. It’s what humans do; in fact, it’s what animals do. Mark Twain noticed this and had a pithy summary.

“We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again—and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.”

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Munger explains that the wary cat has a theory of the world: Stove burns you. Stay away from stove.

Of course, only hot stoves cause burns, so this is not a good theory. But consider two cats:

Cat A believes (correctly) that the theory about stoves causing burns is incomplete, and is not sure what does cause burns.

Cat B stays far away from all stoves, hot or cold, because they magically cause pain and injury in a way the cat doesn’t understand.

It’s pretty clear that Cat B is more likely to survive.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)