Allergy and Immunology
Facing the Challenge of the New Normal
"The coronavirus pandemic has stepped on the brake against our fast and chartless living and way of life." avr
Abercio V. Rotor Ph.D.
The theme of the 18th biennial convention “Allergy and Immunology: Facing the Challenge of the New Normal” is very timely and relevant at this time that the world is gripped by the Coronavirus Pandemic. It brings to our greater awareness the philosophy and advocacy of Dr Arturo B Rotor to whose honor this convention is held biennially.
The theme of the 18th biennial convention “Allergy and Immunology: Facing the Challenge of the New Normal” is very timely and relevant at this time that the world is gripped by the Coronavirus Pandemic. It brings to our greater awareness the philosophy and advocacy of Dr Arturo B Rotor to whose honor this convention is held biennially.
Dr Arturo B Rotor, first Filipino Allergist. Compilation of his award-winning
short stories published by Ateneo de Manila University.
The new normal by definition is a state to which an economy, society, etc. settles following a crisis, when this differs from the situation that prevailed prior to the start of the crisis. What is New Normal?
The term has been used following the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the aftermath of the 2008–2012 global recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The new normal explores ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic might adjust, shape, or reorder the world across multiple dimensions.
The new normal basically refers to change in human behavior initiated by the coronavirus pandemic. Such change will definitely deepen in many sectors of society, and bring about a discipline in improving our daily life, our community, and the whole world. Resistance to change, I believe, will ultimately give in as the crisis deepens, and such change, we pray shall invariably become ingrained in our behavior individually and collectively.
Let me cite the areas of human behavior that the pandemic will have the greatest impact. Here are 20 scenarios.
1. We will spend more time in our home and in our community, and develop stronger family bonding and community kinship;
2. We will learn to abide with the demands and limits of human relationships, starting with the social protocols in combating the disease;
3. We will realize the importance of being frugal and thrifty, and the value of the adage, "Save for a rainy day.”
4. We will learn to distinguish and respond to what is Important and what is urgent, essential and dispensable given a critical situation;
The term has been used following the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the aftermath of the 2008–2012 global recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The new normal explores ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic might adjust, shape, or reorder the world across multiple dimensions.
The new normal basically refers to change in human behavior initiated by the coronavirus pandemic. Such change will definitely deepen in many sectors of society, and bring about a discipline in improving our daily life, our community, and the whole world. Resistance to change, I believe, will ultimately give in as the crisis deepens, and such change, we pray shall invariably become ingrained in our behavior individually and collectively.
Let me cite the areas of human behavior that the pandemic will have the greatest impact. Here are 20 scenarios.
1. We will spend more time in our home and in our community, and develop stronger family bonding and community kinship;
2. We will learn to abide with the demands and limits of human relationships, starting with the social protocols in combating the disease;
3. We will realize the importance of being frugal and thrifty, and the value of the adage, "Save for a rainy day.”
4. We will learn to distinguish and respond to what is Important and what is urgent, essential and dispensable given a critical situation;
5. We will put priority on function over aesthetics when it comes to plans and programs, like building a house, buying appliances, etc.;
6. We will keep ourselves knowledgeable with the growing application of cyber technology such as e-learning, e-mail, e-commerce, particularly in distance education and work from home;
7. We will be more conscious of hygiene and sanitation, proper waste management for better health and cleaner environment;
8. We will prefer simple and practical living, shun from ostentatious affluence, and celebrate only to the significance of the occasion;
9. We will rather choose natural over artificial or synthetic goods, from food to clothing, and decipher genuine from deceiving products and services;
10. We will give more attention to career reorientation for our children and the youth in general guided by lessons and insights taught us by the pandemic;
11. Aware of the consequence of the pandemic to conventional employment, we will assess alternatives such as self-employment and entrepreneurship, and give less consideration to overseas employment;
12. We will give serious assessment to land use policy, reforestation, help arrest expansion of wasteland and decline of our ecological systems;
13. We will review back-to basic approaches in dealing with major problems through people’s initiative, in such programs as skills development on the grassroots;
14. We will help in the development of our economy with strong Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) over big and transnational businesses;
15. We will be learning more on the applications of humility and compassion, love and care, cooperation and unity, selflessness notwithstanding, out of the lessons brought by the pandemic.
16. We will serve as agents of change for a clean and healthy environment, protecting our natural resources, and preserving the integrity of our ecosystems;
17. We will support in decongesting cities by encouraging people to go back to the province and live wholesome life; on the other hand, discourage exodus to cities;
18. We will support population and family planning in both ethical and moral aspects, and in accordance with national policy and social and personal values;
19. We support strongly in the development of a strong natural resistance and immunity in every person as primordial approach to combating COVID-19 and other ailments and diseases;
20. We will act as catalyst in our individual and collective capacity in keeping with nature’s laws and processes of maintaining homeostasis of the environment, as “good housekeepers on our home planet.”
These are but a moderate enumeration of changes that are actually happening today. More reforms in human behavior, in the short and long run, are expected, which we hope to be maintained in post-pandemic time.
Human Behavior is governed by four attributes
Dr. Arturo B. Rotor tells us that the human being should be regarded holistically, when it comes to attending to his health – body and spirit, psyche and intellect, with these four attributes: Man the Thinker (Homo sapiens), Man the Maker (Homo faber), Man the Player (Homo ludens) and the Man the Reverent (Homo spiritus). At the center of the square is a formative conscience, which guides our decisions and actions, and takes us out of a syndrome of indifference and neutral morality.
6. We will keep ourselves knowledgeable with the growing application of cyber technology such as e-learning, e-mail, e-commerce, particularly in distance education and work from home;
7. We will be more conscious of hygiene and sanitation, proper waste management for better health and cleaner environment;
8. We will prefer simple and practical living, shun from ostentatious affluence, and celebrate only to the significance of the occasion;
9. We will rather choose natural over artificial or synthetic goods, from food to clothing, and decipher genuine from deceiving products and services;
10. We will give more attention to career reorientation for our children and the youth in general guided by lessons and insights taught us by the pandemic;
11. Aware of the consequence of the pandemic to conventional employment, we will assess alternatives such as self-employment and entrepreneurship, and give less consideration to overseas employment;
12. We will give serious assessment to land use policy, reforestation, help arrest expansion of wasteland and decline of our ecological systems;
13. We will review back-to basic approaches in dealing with major problems through people’s initiative, in such programs as skills development on the grassroots;
14. We will help in the development of our economy with strong Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) over big and transnational businesses;
15. We will be learning more on the applications of humility and compassion, love and care, cooperation and unity, selflessness notwithstanding, out of the lessons brought by the pandemic.
16. We will serve as agents of change for a clean and healthy environment, protecting our natural resources, and preserving the integrity of our ecosystems;
17. We will support in decongesting cities by encouraging people to go back to the province and live wholesome life; on the other hand, discourage exodus to cities;
18. We will support population and family planning in both ethical and moral aspects, and in accordance with national policy and social and personal values;
19. We support strongly in the development of a strong natural resistance and immunity in every person as primordial approach to combating COVID-19 and other ailments and diseases;
20. We will act as catalyst in our individual and collective capacity in keeping with nature’s laws and processes of maintaining homeostasis of the environment, as “good housekeepers on our home planet.”
These are but a moderate enumeration of changes that are actually happening today. More reforms in human behavior, in the short and long run, are expected, which we hope to be maintained in post-pandemic time.
Human Behavior is governed by four attributes
Dr. Arturo B. Rotor tells us that the human being should be regarded holistically, when it comes to attending to his health – body and spirit, psyche and intellect, with these four attributes: Man the Thinker (Homo sapiens), Man the Maker (Homo faber), Man the Player (Homo ludens) and the Man the Reverent (Homo spiritus). At the center of the square is a formative conscience, which guides our decisions and actions, and takes us out of a syndrome of indifference and neutral morality.
With an enlightened conscience constantly enlivened by values we derive from meaningful experiences, knowledge and wisdom as we grow, from the institutions we built our society – and the lessons the COVID-19 pandemic gave us - we can say that our conscience can better decipher not only what is good from bad but the ultimate of our capacity of being rational and God loving.
COVID-19 and Nature
An old man living alone on top a high mountain was asked how he managed to keep the place beautiful. He simply answered, “Just leave Nature alone.” Some years later when I returned for a visit he was no longer there. His cottage had been replaced with a hotel and tourists freely came up and down the mountain. Trees have been cut, the mountain slope eroded, thrash destroyed the once pristine surroundings, the air was no longer fresh and pure. Until authorities closed down the place.
The current COVID pandemic may be compared in the same way. The corona virus stopped the carnage in man’s destructive hands. While Nature took her own course. It brings to mind if the biblical “Paradise was regained after the Fall” by Nature’s self-healing power.
Since the coronavirus was recognized as pandemic some six months ago, scientists monitoring the effects of the disease on the environment, came up with this initial report.
Pastel drawing by Anna Rotor, 10
- The air is getting cleaner, there is less acid rain, CO2, carbon particulates, and smog, less smog-related illnesses, better growth of plants;
- Less energy used means less gas emission, less greenhouse effect, cushions climate change, improves climate and weather
- Rivers, waterways, lakes, and seas take a respite, less pollution means more fish and marine life are coming back;
- Less air transport cushions occurrence and strength of atmospheric disturbances;
- Less deforestation allows conservation of watershed and wildlife, and recovery of threatened and endangered species;
- Less pollution means less pollution-related deaths, diseases and allergies, less buildup of wasteland;
- Less tourism means less intrusion in natural reserves, cleaner environment, favors wildlife conservation;
- Cleaner land, water and air means balance environment, better health, happier and more fulfilled life;
- Less travel means less traffic congestion, more savings of time and resources, less disease transmission;
- Less commerce and industry means reshaping the economy, unloading idle resources into favorable welfare of the people.
.....................
Even at this stage of the pandemic, there is a trend in the improvement of air and water, less smog and acid rain, kinder weather, cleaner waterways, less toxic waste, less destruction of our ecosystems and wildlife, and the like, which are favorable to good health and well-being. We recognize Nature as the greatest healer - but only by helping restore and maintain her balance and integrity......................
We have entered into a tunnel, dark, long and uncertain, reminiscent of the Dark Age of human history when the world plunged into pandemic and breakdown of civilization. Is history repeating itself?
The pandemic shocked the world unprepared in an untold magnitude respecting no political barriers, race, creed, geography, social nd economic status, a bomb that spared no one, young and old alike and those who are yet to be born. The pandemic challenges human intelligence, humbles the genius, puts back to the drawing table man's ambitious design of postmodernism which simply means "living tomorrow today." The world will not be the same anymore, and its aftershocks are going to be felt for a long period even in post-pandemic times.
This is the nature of the Dark Ages that swept the world of old which lasted for centuries after the fall of the Greco-Roman Empire then the known civilized world anent to our capitalistic world today. Then in the 15th century, out from a corner of the globe like a shining gem, a new era was born – the Renaissance. The Renaissance was like the legendary phoenix bird arising from the ashes of the Greco-Roman civilization. Thereon the world rose to its feet again and marched onto the modern world - and onto our postmodern world of today. We moved so swift to our own measure and concept of progress and in our chartless haste got a "stabbing wound" – the corona virus pandemic.
The irony is that we have never anticipated it even with the breakthroughs in science and technology, economics, cybernetics, and other human achievements. Just before the COVID pandemic the world was in its summit like “the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome,” totally unaware that this was the prelude to another Dark Age.
We know the crisis will come to an end. It is going to be a neo-Renaissance. But first we ask ourselves, "Are we prepared to meet the monster and take it by the horn, so to speak, with the New Normal as a Hercules' weapon?" We know the world will never be the same again, and there is no turning back. There on a new horizon we will create a better one, and bring about a new Renaissance, as history tells us, this time with greater resolve to reach out for the light at the end of the tunnel, by changing the Human Behavior in us, individually and collectively as a people of the world. ~
This is the nature of the Dark Ages that swept the world of old which lasted for centuries after the fall of the Greco-Roman Empire then the known civilized world anent to our capitalistic world today. Then in the 15th century, out from a corner of the globe like a shining gem, a new era was born – the Renaissance. The Renaissance was like the legendary phoenix bird arising from the ashes of the Greco-Roman civilization. Thereon the world rose to its feet again and marched onto the modern world - and onto our postmodern world of today. We moved so swift to our own measure and concept of progress and in our chartless haste got a "stabbing wound" – the corona virus pandemic.
The irony is that we have never anticipated it even with the breakthroughs in science and technology, economics, cybernetics, and other human achievements. Just before the COVID pandemic the world was in its summit like “the glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome,” totally unaware that this was the prelude to another Dark Age.
We know the crisis will come to an end. It is going to be a neo-Renaissance. But first we ask ourselves, "Are we prepared to meet the monster and take it by the horn, so to speak, with the New Normal as a Hercules' weapon?" We know the world will never be the same again, and there is no turning back. There on a new horizon we will create a better one, and bring about a new Renaissance, as history tells us, this time with greater resolve to reach out for the light at the end of the tunnel, by changing the Human Behavior in us, individually and collectively as a people of the world. ~
*Response by Dr Abercio V Rotor to the Lecture of Dr Luz S Fonacier President-elect, American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAA). She is guest of honor and speaker of the 18th biennial convention of the Philippine Society of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (PSAAI) with the theme, "Allergy and Immunology: Facing the Challenge of the New Normal" October 14-17 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment