Coping with SARS

First, the obvious. Whatever happens, there is of course no way this Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome can exterminate Filipinos. A people that has survived "imperialism, clerico-fascism and bureaucrat-capitalism" cannot be annihilated that easily. Having lived through "smiling martial law," the "restoration of democracy" and"the best is yet to come," Filipinos are no pushover for this pernicious virus. Ensconced in a gloriously "strong republic," sans kapatid, kaibigan o kamag-anak, most Filipinos can actually face SARS maskless and most will no doubt prevail over this fearsome scourge.

Why are people so concerned about a little virus that is lethal only to four out of every hundred that it embraces? Most politicians are far more deadly and yet we have become so attached to them and their normally masked faces. Our addiction to these creatures is such that every three years we indulge in a getting-to-know-them, constitutionally-sanctioned national festival. At our expense, we provide a stage where they can strut, sing, dance and weave all kinds of cheap illusions. Those who are able to entertain us best, we elect to be our official tormentors for anywhere between three to six years.

How can people be so unnerved by a microscopic speck that gives us a little fever, constricts out throats just so, perhaps makes us cough drily every now and then and then – in only four out of every hundred cases – finishes us off quickly with pneumonia? After all, for the other ninety-six SARS veterans, full recovery ensues and a normal life thereafter can be anticipated.

Compared to our crony capitalists – those who deliberately confound their public plunder with their so-called entrepreneurship – SARS is obviously a rather gentle killer. Oligarchs who incestuously conjoin their politics and economics have specialized in sadistically bleeding their nation dry generation after generation. The most brilliant of these parasitical creatures have actually learned how to feed off the flesh and blood of yet unborn Filipinos. Through the dynamics of public debt incurment, of state guarantees for behest loans and other mechanisms that privatize gains and burden the public with onerous costs, these low-life forms are able to ruthlessly exploit their helpless nation.

Interestingly, coping with SARS may have some instructive value in dealing with corrupt politicians and plundering oligarchs. Greater and more scientific knowledge about any pernicious species is a must if it is to be neutralized. A hard, honest-to-goodness grounding in behavioral science enables a nation to recognize, diagnose and eventually control whatever threatens it. Ignorance and romanticization combine dangerously to magnify the potency of any public menace whether it be viral, political or oligarchic in character.

Willfulness is called for in effective SARS management. It takes a serious mindset to quickly identify probable SARS victims and decisively define the parameters that must uncompromisingly govern these peoples’ quarantine, therapy and – in the most unfortunate cases – their final disposition. None of these parameters can work unless the whole community where SARS threatens tries to understand its epidemiology, diagnosis, prognostics and, most hopefully, its possible cure.

Focused and collective discipline will of course have to be learned and observed by those who would confront SARS and eventually master it. An effective quarantine cannot be maintained if a suspect community remains much permeable to casual traffic. Psychological states prompted by one’s natural resentment at being treated like a contagion as well as one’s restricted physical mobility have to be strictly monitored and effectively regulated.

In the particular case of Vacante, Alcala – the Pangasinan town that apparently suffered the country’s first documented SARS case – the inhabitants are going through a most difficult learning experience. As part of effective SARS management, the authorities in charge cannot allow the townspeople to move as freely as they did before SARS struck. Neither personal visits, social functions nor pedicab trips within and beyond the town may now take place as casually as in the past. A liberal attitude regarding these actions could compromise the integrity of the town’s quarantine and may lead to calamitous consequences for those in Vacante and beyond.

SARS eventually will be checked, as the Black Plague, the Spanish Flu, cholera, smallpox and malaria were. In all of these cases, functional science, community understanding, uncompromising and timely collective action – perhaps also some prayers – jointly worked to neutralize formidable threats to our species.

SARS certainly will go, but why do we allow politicians, oligarchs and other more dangerous creatures to stay and incessantly torment us? Functional political science, intelligent political organization and collective, patriotic political action can correctly identify, quarantine and, among those who are not incorrigibly afflicted by the spirit of malevolence, even treat and rehabilitate these predatory creatures, reinvent them as decent human beings. Those who are beyond redemption, the nation must collectively, summarily dispose of. (Some analysts have recently suggested that these creatures throats be simply slit. Cremation, whether throats are first slit or not, could be a more sanitary alternative.)

Filipinos will have to go beyond piously praying that SARS and the more pernicious creatures in our midst will somehow dissipate. We may storm the gates of heavens with our prayers no end, but in the end only our intelligent, purposeful and collective action can make the difference between our nation’s much desired-salvation and its continuing, deepening corruption.