Breathing spell

Over the past weeks in my little garden, I’ve spotted for the first time in ages large, colorful dragonflies and a bee that, according to images from science websites, is a honeybee.

The honeybee farms closest to my home are in Los Baños, Laguna; Silang, Cavite, and Lipa, Batangas. Did the bee fly all the way from those areas to Metro Manila?

These days I also notice more butterflies and birds in my garden. There has been no significant increase in squirrel sightings so far. Yes, there are squirrels in our neighborhood; they munch on the nuts that taste like pili in my neighbor’s talisay or Indian almond tree. But there are more stray dogs in the streets when I drive home from the office late at night.

All I’m waiting for is the return of the fireflies, and there will be something I might actually miss when this enhanced community quarantine is over: nature has been given a breathing spell.

You’ve seen the posts on social media, from all over our locked-down planet: the absence of humanity is encouraging coyotes, pumas and other wildlife to explore deserted megacity streets.

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has led to an unprecedented reduction in carbon emissions, providing at least one piece of positive news as Earth Day was marked on April 22 in the horrible time of COVID-19.

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Mass transportation will gradually resume, but I think it’s going to take time before operations return fully back to normal. When we look even at our officemates and members of our own household with suspicion that they might be virus carriers, there will be little eagerness to travel using mass transportation. For leisure travel, many people will likely opt for land trips in their own vehicles.

The collapse of the oil industry is bad news for the millions of overseas Filipino workers in the oil producing countries of the Middle East and North Africa or MENA. We have to prepare for OFWs returning en masse and looking for jobs – on top of the multitudes here in our land who have been displaced by the economic disaster arising from the pandemic.

With many countries seeing their economies contract, priority in employment will be given to their own citizens, and migrant workers will be the first to go as companies close or scale down operations.

The only ones who will likely remain in demand, regardless of nationality, will be health workers. In fact, the government is appealing to nurses and other health professionals to remain in the Philippines and work in our COVID-overwhelmed hospitals instead of going overseas to meet the current high demand worldwide for health workers.

Jocelyn Andamo, secretary general of the Filipino Nurses United, told “The Chiefs” this week on Cignal TV’s One News that while there are nurses who will answer the call to serve in their own country, others will continue seeking greener pastures overseas.

Andamo reiterated the problems faced by nurses in the Philippines, starting with the poor pay that in some health facilities is as low as P7,000 a month.

Many of our nurses are working in MENA hospitals. With COVID-19 rampaging across that region, at least they will likely keep their jobs, unlike many of the blue-collar OFWs in the crude oil industry.

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With the observance of the 50th Earth Day, however, we can dwell on the unintended upsides of the coronavirus pandemic: reduced carbon emissions and a respite for wildlife.

Our suffering due to COVID-19 has helped amplify the voices of advocates of wildlife protection. With most studies pointing to bats as the source of the COVID-causing SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-coronavirus-2), perhaps even the most diehard exotic food gourmand will think three times before indulging his or her appetite for bat soup. Or, for that matter, for stewed pangolin.

The SARS-CoV-2 is suspected to have jumped from bats to pangolin to human, or perhaps directly from bat to human in the wildlife markets of China’s Wuhan City. SARS was reportedly transmitted from bats to civet cats to humans.

There is another possibility, being investigated by certain foreign governments, that the coronavirus accidentally infected people working at the virus laboratory in Wuhan. And from there, the global plague was unleashed. There is still no definitive word on this.

In the meantime, Beijing has reportedly ordered all wildlife markets shuttered and is cracking down on wildlife trade. Whether this will cascade down to every wet market in China remains to be seen.

Also, someone may have to define which species constitute wildlife. Foreign media reported yesterday that the wet markets have started reopening across China, with many still selling wildlife.

We ourselves would have to reassess our interaction with wildlife. While we put cat meat in our siopao, we don’t eat civet meat. We only drink the coffee from beans that the civets eat and then poop – and we pay a premium for the coffee.

I don’t think anyone eats pangolin in our country, but giant bats are eaten in some parts of the Philippines. (Why eat bat, with so many chickens running around? Even duck meat isn’t popular here, although we like duck embryo in balut.)

But while Filipinos don’t eat pangolin meat or use their scales for medicine, we sell the animals to the foreigners who want them.

It would be ironic if the virus that has so horribly upended our lives was passed on to humans in the wildlife market of Wuhan from pangolins that were sold by Filipino wildlife traffickers to the Chinese.

On Earth Day, it’s good to bear in mind that what goes around comes around.