The Environmental Pollution Studies Laboratory of IESM-CS-UP Diliman has reported a 180% decrease in Manila’s pollution levels just over a week after the Luzon wide lockdown. Similar drops in pollution levels are being recorder globally as the COVID 19 pandemic shuts down the urban centers of the world.
Though some environmental activists see a silver lining in less respiratory deaths due to air pollution, the immediate economic displacement now affecting millions of low-income Filipinos is a terrible demonstration of how extreme tradeoffs between economics and the environment will always cause suffering to the poorest communities.
PBEST has always advocated a balanced approach in managing the complex issues of the environment which, like the raging existential repercussions of this global health crisis, is giving a hard lesson to all inhabitants of the planet on how interlinked the world’s ecosystems are.
This microbial menace from Wuhan China, an occurrence of nature, unlike climatic disasters where we can seek shelter and refuge, propagates and kills as an invisible contagion exploiting our human bodies as hosts. There are no vaccines yet and its long incubation period forces us all to unintuitively suspend our social culture.
We strongly support the call for mass testing to stop more infections innocently passed by asymptomatic carriers and to gather more accurate data to guide the planning and execution of emergency measures. We need all sectors to generously share their resources for more treatment facilities and support our frontliners.
The trend still shows an alarmingly steep upward slope of confirmed cases. This is not the flattening of the curve that we are aiming for. To kill COVID19 our Bayanihan should focus on the W.H.O’s advise: ISOLATE (social distancing please), TEST (we don’t have enough test kits, this needs government and private sector resources), TREAT (adequate resources health workers for treatment facilities), TRACE (very challenging because this needs honesty to work).
This is not a time for politics. This is not a time for profiteering. This is not a time for corruption. This is not a time for incompetence.
This is a time to heed the guidance of scientific and medical experts.
This is a time to help each other the best way we can.