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Just a few observations and a paradox concerning the rate of Covid-19 (novel Coronavirus) infections in The Philippines
The Philippines is a remarkably beautiful country made up of over 7000 islands with many surrounded by calm turquoise waters, beautiful corals, iridescent giant clams, tropical fish and brightly coloured sponges and even lavender and pink starfish. The local people are unusually friendly, kind, sociable, fun-loving and speak English so it is a great country to visit as a tourist. I recently spent a few months there exploring the natural beauty and trying to let people know how cheap solar power has become recently: cheaper than any other electricity in the Philippines.
Unfortunately, The Philippines is not all Paradise because there are problems with corruption, pollution, congestion, poverty, poor planning, electricity production and reliability, and also with healthcare. Vaccination is a wonderful cheap safe way to protect people against infectious diseases but in The Philippines, the live attenuated Polio vaccine can pass through a vaccinated child and emerge as live infectious Polio virus into polluted rivers and water sources which then infect other vulnerable Philippinos with a full Polio disease. Better sewage treatment should prevent this completely. So the Philippines should be both rich and beautiful but is not currently and it is facing a special threat from the novel Coronavirus that causes the Covid-19 disease. It might appear surprising and paradoxical that The Philippines which struggles to prevent diseases that almost every other country on the Earth can manage is now apparently not being swamped by Covid-19 cases when it has millions of potentially infected Chinese visitors and relatively poor health infrastructure.
Sometimes, even just getting back out of the Philippines can be difficult or impossible - if one has stayed for 6 months or longer.
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