2020’s calamitous start
Credit to Author: Marlen V. Ronquillo| Date: Sat, 01 Feb 2020 18:09:05 +0000
Porcine diseases in the Philippines, even the lethal ones, usually have brief, rampaging spans. A veteran hog raiser, battle-scarred by his countless efforts to counter farm site infestations of transmissible gastroenteritis, porcine reproductive respiratory syndrome and the like, said major swine outbreaks are usually over in three months, max.
The usual casualty count is one fourth of the stock. But then, you can move on after that because there are usually a 10-year period before anything deadly strikes again.
This time it is different. The African swine fever (ASF), which was spread by tainted meat from China, started infesting hog farms in the Region 4A or Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon) area early in September last year. It is still around, swiftly and methodically killing small farms in Tarlac, Bataan and Pangasinan.
At the start of the year 2020, the ASF has wiped out the most productive hog-producing enclave in Central Luzon: the Porac-Angeles-Magalang area. Several farms with populations of 1,000 to 20,000 per farm had been wasted by the ASF, with investments amounting to hundreds of millions of pesos down the drain. Not included in the count is the human toll, the desperation of the raisers (some third-generation hog producers) and the joblessness of their workers, some with them from 20 to 30 years. Maybe the toll in the Calabarzon area is worse.
The ASF is too lethal that it leaves nothing in its wake. Worse, it is both lingering and persistent.
January 2020 has yet to close when a deadly coronavirus, this time swiftly and methodically killing human beings, was first reported in Wuhan City, China. It has already killed more than 200 people and the virus has spread to the United States, France, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Nepal and several other countries. A lockdown order, this time to save humans, covers around 40 million people living in 12 cities in and around Wuhan. Other countries, close to panic, have started evacuating their nations in the lockdown areas. Those ill equipped to do emergency airlifts, have just cautioned their citizens to just take the necessary precautions.
The lessons of the ASF and the vast swaths of A-1 hog producing areas that it has wasted in its deadly wake serve as a grim reminder of the deadly viruses that spread from China.
Whether the Philippine government authorities admit this or not, this is a reality. And the possible carriers are many: Chinese tourists in the resort areas. Chinese workers of Philippine offshore gaming operators are all over Metro Manila, who share domicile with our countrymen in the crowded condos. Chinese workers in the many construction sites funded by China loans. There are neither restrictions nor monitoring of Chinese nationals who move in and out of the country.
So far, only one case of the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), a Chinese woman, was reported in the country. But the sense of panic is there and the legendary incompetence and underfunding of the Department of Health (DoH) does not help. At least 10 schools in Metro Manila, those with Filipino-Chinese students in particular, have imposed class suspensions, even without the go signal from the DoH.
The sense of panic is partly caused by the news that single case and reports that several foreigners recently arrived into the country from Wuhan and they are currently under strict monitoring. A total ban on travelers from China will most likely be imposed. Right now, a strict quarantine is being imposed on arrivals from China, on top of the visa restrictions for people coming from the lockdown areas.
The World Health Organization, which was earlier undecided on the scope and gravity of the virus, has declared the virus a global emergency. With more than 8,000 cases in the 20 countries and more than 200 deaths (as of Friday morning, January 31), it has to issue a global emergency declaration. The global corporate giants with production, assembly and supply chains in China have been adversely affected by the fast-spreading, fast-killing virus. Global tourism has taken a hit. Already reeling from its worst economic performance in years, China may see its worst gross domestic product (GDP) growth year this year.
With no institutional memory of a competent and comprehensive response to an emergency, Filipinos are praying. It was just unfortunate that the person who is in charge of leading the prayers just left the archbishop’s palace in Manila to assume a greater role at the Vatican.
The panic over the 2019-nCoV is such that the Taaal Volcano eruption on January 12, with an economic loss of P6.6 billion, mostly on the already-battered agriculture sector, is already fading from the national consciousness.
The body polity could have provided breaks from these spate of calamities with positive news on the economic and governance front. But the start of 2020 delivered not-so-good news.
The country’s GDP growth for 2019, a reporting ritual that was duly announced on January 2020, shattered all expectations of sustained great leap forwards. The 2019 GDP, reported at 5.9 percent, was decent by all standards. But it was the lowest in eight years and the government was at a loss for a possible scapegoat.
Because the sector that dragged down the GDP growth was agriculture, and it is a sector that the government has written off, neglected, forgotten. On top of the brutal wages of the ASF epidemic, the country’s 3 million small rice farmers have been pushed to desperation by a rice tariff law that has flooded the country with imported rice, at the expense of the paddies tilled for countless generations by small rice farmers.
Food imports, not domestic production, have been made the anchor of the country’s food security, the only country in the world that has adopted that policy of unprecedented dumbness and folly.
On the governance front, the big news at the start of calamitous 2020 was the report from Transparency International (TI), the institution that ranks the level of corruption in countries.
The TI ranked us with the countries prone to corruption, or with long histories of corruption, 113th of the 180 countries ranked, bunched with Zambia, Kazakhstan and the like.
Can we get over and reverse this calamitous start? Those who say “We hope so,” say it without much conviction.