Survival of the healthiest

“We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”

—Albert Einstein

By Alex P. Vidal

IT’S becoming obvious that those who are healthier or the healthiest among us are the ones who will most likely survive the COVID-19 pandemic even if it will escalate beyond the projected period of decline.

It’s no longer a “survival of the fittest” as the phrase in Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species suggests to describe the process of natural selection. 

Although Darwin he did not coin the phrase and borrowed it only from English philosopher Herbert Spencer, who first talked about survival of the fittest in his Principles of Sociology, the case of those who have survived in the calamities and tragedies in the modern world had been always referred to as a case of “survival of the fittest.”

Darwinists’ “survival of the fittest”, however, is the idea that certain people become powerful in society because they are innately better. 

Social Darwinism has been used to justify imperialism, racism, eugenics and social inequality at various times over the past century and a half.

On the other hand, the case of those who survive the pandemic or natural calamities and catastrophes should be called as “survival of the best,” according to the late Ilonggo philosopher and lawyer Ernesto Justiniani Dayot.

We survive because we are the best among our fellowmen, Dayot said. We have the best health; the best mental and emotional strength; the best physical endurance; the best ability; and the best mind.

-o0o-

As rationale beings we easily rise to the occasion when the goings get tough. 

Our thinking, the reason as our absolute, becomes the vanguard of our survival.

Let me add to the discussion.

Those who will survive the coronavirus pandemic will not yet die because they have the best immune system; they are the ones who strictly adhere to the “stay-at-home” and “enhanced social distancing” guidelines. 

They wash their hands properly and regularly; they cover their faces with masks (preferably N95) in public; and they eat healthy foods like fruits and vegetables with vitamins that prevent or kill any virus.  

Those with underlying illnesses and will be infected have been “destined” to go first; they are automatic candidates for those who are considered “unfit” to survive under the present circumstance.

As human beings, we have certain basic needs. We must have food, water, air, and shelter to survive. 

Humans cannot survive If any one of these basic needs is not met. Before past explorers set off to find new lands and conquer new worlds, they had to make sure that their basic needs were met.

In other words, in this age it’s now a “survival of the healthiest” when we refer to the inhabitants in today’s generation who will continue to live beyond the specter of coronavirus.

-o0o-

Here’s the latest from the Live Science in the coronavirus epicenter: 

—New York has reported at least 222,284 total positive cases of COVID-19 and 12,822 confirmed COVID-19 deaths. 

That makes it the state with the most U.S. coronavirus cases. A full 122,148 of those cases and 7,890 confirmed deaths are in New York City, according to official city counts, which tend to lag behind statewide counts. The city has also reported 4,309 deaths of people who were not tested but were strongly suspected to have the illness.

—The mainland Dutchess, Erie, Orange, Rockland, and Westchester counties, as well as Long Island's Nassau and Suffolk counties, all have thousands of cases as well.

—These statistics likely represent an undercount, given that many people are dying in their homes but are not counted in official tallies because they have not been tested for the virus, as Gothamist and WNYC reported. There's also evidence that infection rates in New York City are much higher than the official count.

—Still, tentatively optimistic trends are starting to emerge as of April 16. The numbers of hospitalized patients has dropped slightly, as have the numbers of intubated patients and patients in intensive care units. the number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths statewide on April 15, 606, was the lowest in 10 days. New York has begun to share ventilators with other states, including New Jersey.

—Testing is free in New York.

—Health officials are seeking blood donations from people who have fully recovered from the illness to help treat those still infected. More information can be found here.

—On April 1, Dr. Laura M. Huckins, a doctor at Mt. Sinai hospital and lead of the STOP COVID NYC project announced on Twitter an effort to understand and track symptoms of the virus across New York City. She asked individuals across the city to text COVID to 64722, complete a survey, and respond to daily texts asking for updates on their condition. The data, she said, is helpful in fighting the disease whether you are healthy or sick.

—New York has run 573,223 COVID-19 tests to date, according to the COVID Tracking Project. On April 15, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that the state is asking the Food and Drug Administration to approve a fingerprick test that, he said, would allow the state to move from 2,000 to 100,000 tests per day.

—Cuomo announced an order April 17 requiring all public and private labs in New York to follow the direction of the state Department of Health, with the goal of coordinating them to prioritize and ramp up testing.

—On April 16, Cuomo extended the state's restrictions on public activities until May 15, saying that the additional time was necessary to assure the state was ready to "unpause."

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

Tourist buses used to transport bodies?

“The one thing we really don’t need is mass hysteria. Eighty percent of people have such minor symptoms, they don’t actually require any medical care at all. The 20 percent who do feel quite ill need to be evaluated, and some of them will require hospitalization and some of them will require intensive care.”

—Dr. Robert Murphy, executive director of the Institute for Global Health at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and an infectious diseases professor.

By Alex P. Vidal

I HEARD a sudden “scream” as soon as I turned left on Baxter Street where the tents for COVID-19 patients were built in the elevated emergency entrance of the Elmhurst Hospital Center in Elmhurst, Queens at past six o’clock in the evening Wednesday (April 15).

When I checked, no one was around. 

In fact, nobody was there; not even a single hospital crew or patient. There was eerie silence broken by that mysterious scream, a woman’s voice. 

The entire episode had been captured by my four-minute video I started while crossing to the main hospital building on Broadway Street in the beginning.

Earlier in the video’s first two minutes, I attempted in vain to get inside the hospital using the main door on Broadway Street. 

It was a tumultuous scene and I thought I couldn’t penetrate the main station where coronavirus patients were being attended to by overworked and exhausted doctors and nurses.   

My purpose in going there was to check the refrigerated truck captured in the video taken by Dr. Collin Smith, emergency room doctor, third week of March which was parked near the garbage area (partly hidden from the road on Baxter Street) where bodies of dead COVID-19 victims had been kept reportedly before being burned or buried in undisclosed places.

The refrigerated truck wasn’t there anymore.

-o0o-

Visible in public were some six tinted tourist buses parked outside the hospital on Broadway Street.

We received reports earlier that the state-of-the-art tourist buses “were being used to transport COVID-19 patients” after reports came out days earlier that some of the dead bodies had been brought to the Hart Island when mortuaries overflowed as the death toll increased by 40 percent first week of April.

The National Geographic confirmed April 13 that with record-breaking coronavirus-related deaths overwhelming morgues and mortuaries in New York City, “the public cemetery on Hart Island is seeing an increase in burials—from 24 a week to 24 a day.”

By April 13, the report said, more than 10,000 people in the city had died from COVID-19, after daily deaths surpassed 700 for five days.

“Some coronavirus victims are being laid to rest at Hart Island, in Long Island Sound, just east of the Bronx,” reported the National Geographic. 

“Since 1869, the wind-swept, mile-long island with rocky shores and crumbling buildings has taken in the bodies of people with no known next of kin, including those who have died from diseases of epidemic proportions.”

-o0o-

A spokesperson for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office said that, of those who perished from COVID-19, only New Yorkers whose bodies are not claimed by family members are being buried at Hart Island.

The New York Times, meanwhile, reiterated that the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. is in New York, particularly concentrated in New York City and its surrounding areas. 

As of Wednesday evening, 11,586 people had died, data from the John Hopkins Hospital revealed.

But the number of new cases in the state seems to have reached a plateau, according to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo who said, “I believe the worst is over if we continue to be smart.”

As of Wednesday (April 15), New York City looks nothing like its former loud bustling self with many of its thoroughfares quiet and subdued.

Ridership in poorer neighborhoods, where many must continue commuting to work, has not changed as dramatically while subway use has plunged.

The city’s low-income neighborhoods have been hit the hardest by the pandemic, it was reported. Many of the areas with the highest percentage of confirmed virus cases have the lowest median income, based on data from the first month of the outbreak.

Reports said preliminary data on the City’s fatalities shows that the outbreak is killing black and Latino people at twice the rate that it is killing white people.

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

Adler on the purpose of our life

"Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor."

—Sholom Aleicem

By Alex P. Vidal

A curious reader once asked famous psychologist and author, Dr. Mortimer J. Adler, director of the Institute for Philosophical Research, about the purpose of life. 

"It seems to me that the most important question of all is the purpose of life," the reader suggested. "What are we doing here on earth? What is our destiny? How do various thinkers approach this most urgent and baffling of all questions?"

Adler's answer: "Let us begin by asking the purpose of the question about the purpose of life. What do men have in mind when they ask this question? Asking it is a peculiarly human phenomenon. Other creatures just exist and go on unquestioningly to pursue their natural ends--to be a tree or a bird or a stone. It is man's peculiar misery or glory that he perennially poses the question of the purpose of his own existence.”

Adler added: "What, then, are men who ask this question trying to discover? Are they asking about the destiny appointed by God for man to achieve through his earthly existence? Does man have an ultimate goal beyond the sphere of the temporal experience? And if so, what must he do to attain it? The Christian doctrine of the Kingdom of God as man's ultimate destiny is one of the answers to the question.”

-o0o-

"Or are men asking whether human life can be made significant on earth by achieving all the perfections of which it is capable? In the philosophy of Aristotle, each kind of creature tends toward the perfection of its own nature. Thus, for man, the goal--the purpose--of life is to achieve the virtues that constitute happiness,” he explained further.

"As against these theological and philosophical ideas of human destiny, our question may arise from a conviction of the purposelessness of the physical universe as a whole. We look out on the world around us and see nothing but a whirl of atoms in a meaningless void. Whether we see the physical world as chaotic and ‘chancy’ or as an orderly cosmos, human life may still seem meaningless and valueless.

"The pattern of material events is no answer to the questing human heart and mind. All of science remains silent when man asks, 'What am I doing here? Where did I come from? Where am I going? What is the purpose of my life?'

"Many modern thinkers, faced with this urgent and disturbing questions, reject the traditional theological and philosophical views of the purpose and meaning of human life. They assert that men can and must set their own goals, and find meaning in the creation and transformation of their own nature.

"In their view, a man who is truly human must live for some transcendent goal that he sets himself. If he does not do this, he must be engulfed in overwhelming despair at the meaninglessness of life."

Don’t sacrifice the Panay-Guimaras-Negros bridge project

“We will burn that bridge when we come to it.”

—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

By Alex P. Vidal

ALREADY delayed for about three years since it was announced, the construction of the Panay-Guimaras-Negros (PGN) Island Bridges Project will proceed this year, according to reports that quoted the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) on January 19, 2020.

NEDA pointed to the Investment Coordination Committee (ICC), which has reportedly approved the construction of the P189.53 billion project that will connect the islands of Panay, Guimaras, Negros through the Official Development Assistance (ODA).

President Duterte hinted in his recent announcement that the P275 billion emergency funds in the 2020 General Appropriations Act given by congress “might not be enough” if the pandemic will last for two years.

The government might sell some of its prime properties, the president further intoned.

Let’s hope the funds for the PGN Island Bridges Project won’t be re-channeled for the “social amelioration program” or “sacrificed” to be used in helping the day-to-day sustenance of “starving” poor families while COVID-19 continues to wallop the Filipinos.

We are confident the funds for the mammoth project have been secured and the pandemic won’t stand in the way for the much-anticipated start of the construction.  

-o0o-

Ilonggos have been so excited and optimistic about the dream bridges,  bruited about to offer a safer, faster, more convenient land travel to residents and tourists of the Western Visayas island provinces, once operational.

Since it has been given a green light by the NEDA, Ilonggos will never accept any excuse once it has been sidelined anew. 

Delaying it because of the coronavirus would be unconceivable and unacceptable for the excited people of Iloilo. Guimaras, and Negros.

The biggest infrastructure project-ever under the Duterte administration will reportedly involve the construction of a 32.47-km, four-lane, and two sea-crossing bridges, including the connecting roads and interchanges that will connect the three Western Visayas island provinces.

The colossal land passageway project is expected to provide a safer and faster travel instead of the usual sea travel between the islands.

Also, the bridges will allow easier access and open a network of more convenient transportation linkage that can transform the flow of people, goods and services between the three islands and their respective provinces.

“These are the building blocks of our people’s dreams and aspirations to ease congestion and spread growth throughout the country,” Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia said earlier.

Let’s wait and see.

-o0o-

OUR neighborhood here in New York City remains to be the coronavirus “epicenter of epicenter” in the United States and in the world. As of March 14, there were 195,749 cases in New York and 10,058 deaths.

Total cases in the U.S. is 580,467 and 23,529 deaths.

Here’s the latest of what happened in the last 48 hours:

-Governor Andrew Cuomo has directed schools and nonessential businesses to stay closed for an additional two weeks through April 29^th;

-An Executive Order will direct employers to provide essential workers with masks free of charge to wear when interacting with the public;

-A bipartisan effort is being made with Maryland Governor Hogan to call for $500 billion in state aid;

-Cuomo has sent a letter to the US Treasury to ensure that New Yorkers' stimulus checks do not get frozen or seized by creditors; 

-An additional $200M in emergency food assistance will be available for low-income households enrolled in SNAP;

-New COVID-19 testing facilities are opening downstate, primarily in minority communities;

-A $600 in additional weekly unemployment benefits will be made available to all New Yorkers; and the period covered by unemployment benefits is being extended for another 13 weeks, for total of 39 weeks;

-New Yorkers who have recovered from COVID-19 have been encouraged to donate blood;

-NYS has increased the maximum fine for violations of the state's social distancing protocol from $500 to $1,000;

-New Yorkers without health insurance can apply through NY State of Health through May 15, 2020; must apply within 60 days of losing coverage.

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

‘I’ll sue my ex-lover for violence’

“I am never proud to participate in violence, yet I know that each of us must care enough for ourselves that we can be ready and able to come to our own defense when and wherever needed.”

—Maya Angelou

By Alex P. Vidal

A 33-year-old lady sports organizer from Negros Occidental in the Philippines yesterday (April 13) sought my advice regarding her plans to file a case for “violence against women” against her former lover, a 53-year-old Filipino-American who resides here in New York City.

“My problem started when I decided to cut our affair in December (2019),” Celine (not her real name) told this writer in a Messenger.

The former lover, Anthony (not his real name), allegedly sent several photos and videos to Celine’s friends in Negros and Manila showing their sexual trysts.

“He threatened to ruin me after I decided to stop seeing him,” Celine lamented. “He sent the photos and videos to my circle of friends, including the father of my kids.”

Celine, who is now in the Philippines, plans to fly back to New York “after the lockdown will end so I can finalize the case I plan to file (against Anthony).”

She admitted having an affair with Anthony in 2019 “because I needed his help at that time.”

Celine arrived in New York in April 2019 and was broke. 

She needed an apartment and a job. Anthony, a successful Fil-Am engineer, was “referred” to her by another old male friend who happened to be Anthony’s colleague.

Anthony, a married man with three kids, “adopted” Celine and they hit it off romantically.

-o0o-

After several months of intense sexual liaison, Celine decided to end the illicit affair.

She fears for her life, she said because Anthony, who wanted the relationship to continue, was enraged and allegedly vowed to “avenge” the breakup.

I couldn’t comment on Celine’s problem with Anthony, especially about the cases she wanted to know on violence against women in the United States as I am a journalist and not a lawyer. 

I learned that it is estimated that 35 per cent of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or sexual violence by a non-partner (not including sexual harassment) at some point in their lives. 

I learned further that some national studies show that up to 70 per cent of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime. 

Evidence shows further that women who have experienced physical or sexual intimate partner violence report higher rates of depression, having an abortion and acquiring HIV, compared to women who have not. 

“Similar to data from other regions, in all four countries of a multi-country study from the Middle East and North Africa, men who witnessed their fathers using violence against their mothers, and men who experienced some form of violence at home as children, were significantly more likely to report perpetrating intimate partner violence in their adult relationships,”according to the facts from the United Nations. 

“For example, in Lebanon the likelihood of perpetrating physical violence was more than three times higher among men who had witnessed their fathers beating their mothers during childhood than those who did not.”

-o0o-

UN estimated that of the 87,000 women who were intentionally killed in 2017 globally, more than half (50,000-58 per cent) were killed by intimate partners or family members, meaning that 137 women across the world are killed by a member of their own family every day. 

More than a third (30,000) of the women intentionally killed in 2017 were killed by their current or former intimate partner, it was learned further.

Adult women account for nearly half (49 per cent) of all human trafficking victims detected globally. Women and girls together account for 72 per cent, with girls representing more than three out of every four child trafficking victims. 

More than four out of every five trafficked women and nearly three out of every four trafficked girls are trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

It is estimated that there are 650 million women and girls in the world today who were married before age 18. During the past decade, the global rate of child marriage has declined. South Asia had the largest decline during this time, from 49 per cent to 30 per cent. 

Still, 12 million girls under 18 are married each year and in sub-Saharan Africa—where this harmful practice is most common—almost four out of 10 young women were married before their 18th birthday. Child marriage often results in early pregnancy and social isolation, interrupts schooling, limits the girl’s opportunities and increases her risk of experiencing domestic violence.

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

‘That sounds like a bullshit’

“Politicians also have no leisure, because they are always aiming at something beyond political life itself, power and glory, or happiness.”

—Aristotle

By Alex P. Vidal 

THIS story I summarized from "Aristotle and the Aardvark Go to the Washington" is timely for Filipino politicians who mesmerize the voters in order to get their attention and sympathy.

What springs to our minds--and occasionally our lips--just about every time we hear a politico or pundit deliver a speech or give a press conference or hold forth on some Sunday-morning show is "that sounds like a bullshit!"
It was election time again, so a senatorial candidate decided to go to the local reservation to gather support from the Native Americans.

They were all assembled in the council hall to hear his speech.

As the candidate worked up to his finale, the crowd was getting increasingly excited. “I promise better education opportunities for Native Americans!” he declared.

‘HOYA’ 

And the crowd went wild, shouting “Hoya! Hoya!”

Encouraged by their enthusiasm, the candidate shouted, “I promise gambling reforms to allow a casino on the reservation!”

“Hoya! Hoya!” cried the crowd, stomping their feet.

“I promise more social reforms and job opportunities for Native American!”

The crowd reached a frenzied pitch, shouting, “Hoya! Hoya! Hoya!”

After the speech, the politician was touring the reservation and saw a herd of cattle.

Feigning interest in the livestock, he asked the chief if he could get a closer look at the herd.

“Sure,” the chief said, “but be careful not to step in the hoya.”

Broca’s Brain

"They were apes only yesterday. Give them time. Once an ape--always an ape. No, it will be different...Come back here in an age or so and you shall see..." -- THE GODS, DISCUSSING THE EARTH, IN THE MOTION PICTURE VERSION OF H.G. WELLS' 'The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936)'

By Alex P. Vidal

IF we think we are a gift to mankind because we possess extra-ordinary geniuses, would we allow our brains to be stored in formalin to retard spoilage and displayed in museum after we die?

Many of us today probably possess brains that are qualified to be preserved for purposes of research and benefit of science. 

Like Broca's brain.

In his book, Broca's Brain, reflections on the romance of science, the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan discussed the exploration of the universe; that is, it is about science. 

Sagan analyzed diverse topics--from a crystal of salt to the structure of the cosmos, myth and legend, birth and death, robots and climates, the exploration of the planets, the nature of intelligence, the search for life beyond the Earth.

"But, as I hope will emerge, these topics are connected because the world is connected, and also human beings perceive the world through similar sense organs and brains and experiences that may not reflect the external realities with absolute fidelity," explained Sagan. 

In all of our four-billion-year history of life in our planet, in all of our four-million-year history of the human family, Sagan said, "there is only one generation privileged to live through that unique transitional moment: that generation is ours."

MUSEUM OF MAN 

During his visit at Musee de l'Homme or Museum of Man in Paris in the 70's, Sagan saw a container from the shelf and examined it closely. The label read P. Broca. "In my hands was Broca's brain," quipped Sagan.

P. Broca was Paul Broca, a surgeon, a neurologist and an anthropologist, a major figure in the development of both medicine and anthropology in the mid-19th century.

Sagan said, Broca performed distinguished work on cancer pathology and the treatment of aneurysms, and made a landmark contribution to understanding the origin of aphasia--an impairment of the ability to articulate ideas.

Sagan described Broca as "a brilliant and compassionate man" who was concerned with medical care for the poor. 

"Under cover of darkness, at the risk of his own life, he successfully smuggled out of Paris in a horse-drawn cart 73 million francs, stuffed into carpetbags and hidden under potatoes, the treasury of the Assistance Publique which--he believed, at any rate--he was saving from pillage. He was the founder of modern brain surgery. He studied infant mortality. Toward the end of his career he was created a senator," Sagan disclosed.

Broca founded a society of "freethinkers" in 1848. Almost along among French servants of the time, narrated Sagan, "he was sympathetic to Charles Darwin's idea of evolution by natural selection."

GRATITUDE

T.H. Huxley, "Darwin's Bulldog," remarked that the mere mention of Broca's name filled him with a sense of gratitude, and Broca was quoted as saying, "I would rather be a transformed ape than a degenerate son of Adam." For these and other views he was publicly denounced for "materialism" and, like Socrates, for corrupting the young.

Broca died in 1880, perhaps of the very sort of aneurysm that he had studied so brilliantly, disclosed Sagan. 

At the moment of his death he was working on a comprehensive study of brain anatomy. He had established the first professional societies, schools of research, and scientific journals of modern anthropology in France. 

His laboratory specimens became incorporated into what for many years was called the Musee Broca. Later it merged to become a part of the Musee de l'Homme.

"It was Broca himself, whose brain I was cradling, who had established the macabre collection I had been contemplating," recalled Sagan. "He had studied embryos and apes, and people of all races, measuring like mad in an effort to understand the nature of human being. And despite the present appearance of the collection and my suspicions, he was not, at least by the standards of his time, more of a jingoist or a racist than most, and certainly not that cold, uncaring, dispassionate scientist, heedless of the human consequences of what he does. Broca very much cared."