NOT wars, not natural calamities but bacteria, viruses and parasites have been the mass killers of human beings. Covid-19 has so far killed 2,001,773 and counting. The flu pandemic of 1918 killed some 50 to 100 million. It was so deadly it drastically changed public health systems.
But it did not change economic and political systems, which drive the undemocratic spread of disease-carrying viruses. Thus, the world’s poor remain 30 times more likely than the rich to get infected with and die from the Covid-19 virus.
With advances in communication and transportation technologies the world has morphed into the global village of 7.8 billion people it is today. But because production, consumption, and governance patterns have not changed, 1.89 billion (nearly 36 percent) of them live in extreme poverty. In developing countries, it’s 50 percent give and take. Thus, in this and future pandemics, the poor will suffer and die the most.
There should, therefore, be no going back to our old ways of producing and consuming, of governing, of educating and of worshipping. The public health system still deserves top priority attention, but not to lose sight of the fact that the poor man’s chances of surviving a pandemic can improve only if corresponding changes happen in critical other areas of life.
City slums must be prioritized for elimination and the urban poor provided with decent housing in resettlement areas that at least have safe potable running water.
Quality of life in rural areas must also be raised to stem the tide of migration to the cities. Hence, spending for increased agricultural productivity should ramp up. Rural areas are healthier places to live in. People must be encouraged to stay there and not migrate to cities by raising their incomes substantially.
Increasingly critical is that human enterprises stop the wanton destruction of wild animals’ natural habitats. Loss of these habitats is causing viruses in the wild to migrate to humans.
Government must also decentralize and democratize some more so regions and/or provinces can be self-sufficient in food, education and health care.
Last but not the least, there is no going back to medieval colonial attitudes and values our educational and religious institutions continue to foster. We cannot go back to an education that gives civil authorities the medieval “divine right of kings” to be obeyed and depended on by their subordinates.
There’s no going back to a religion that asks “the poor not to forget they have a special place in the heart of Sto. Niño.” We need a religion whose adherents do not just pray for the poor but physically bring them to the place of good health and prosperity Sto. Niño intends for all and not just for a few.