Out of the box

BOXES and boxes of them, being loaded/unloaded into and from airplanes, container vans, all sorts of transport vehicles. Precious cargo containing the world’s most coveted goods – life-saving equipment, protective suits and tools, test kits, gloves and masks to stop the war being waged by an invisible killer. It’s a defensive war, we have to be armed but not by tanks.

The whole world is in desperate need of more and more of what those boxes contain. We want an out-of-the-box solution while scientists are in a race to produce a vaccine against the coronavirus that’s “crawling all over the place.” We have also been told that were it not for the Luzon-wide quarantine, “the disease would have spread very rapidly with dire results,” such as 10 million of the 13.8m NCR population infected, with a possible death toll of 180,000.

The conclusion was reached by data analytics experts led by Prof. Maya Baltazar Herrera of AIM, Profs. Antonio Dans and Leonila Dans of UP college of medicine, AIM alumni and partners 12 Baskets Analytics Inc. and colleagues. In their forecast of a seven-month (April to November) trajectory, they warned, “We must prepare ourselves for what is to be our new normal” as “it’s still possible for the epidemic to begin again through travel.” (Look at Wuhan, after lifting a strict lockdown, new cases were those of foreigners traveling into Hubei and China.) Wuhan, incidentally, is a big manufacturer of surgical and face masks.

Now the US has awakened to the need to be “less dependent” on outside sources like China for imports of vital medical supplies. President Trump ordered GM, among others, to shift from making cars to producing masks, ventilators, etc. Bill Gates has called for a stockpiling of these highly desirable goods for the next wave of trouble.

Amid the gloom, former congressman Albee Benitez of Negros Occ. has a brilliant idea right out of the box. He’s asking DOLE and Tesda to turn those of us idled by ECQ into makers of masks, masks for now and forever. He was probably inspired by designers, seamstresses, and other creative people, of which we have an infinite supply, turning out homemade masks by the thousands. Someday those creations will be a collector’s item!