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A broader look at today’s business n
Saturday, July 18, 2020 Vol. 15 No. 282
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‘JUST LET THEM BE, STAY AWAY’
T
By Jonathan L. Mayuga
HE travel restrictions forced by the Covid-19 pandemic are serving as a blessing in disguise for efforts to protect the local population from diseases caused by smuggled wildlife or brought by travelers unknowingly infected with them.
These diseases could include even the bubonic plague, which killed 50 million people in Europe in a pandemic in the Middle Ages. It recently killed a teenage boy in Mongolia, who ate a rodent-like animal, and was also detected in squirrels in Colorado. The risk of bubonic plague reaching Philippine shores is very slim, according to a Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) expert interviewed by the BusinessMirror, citing climate and the pandemic’s travel restrictions. Still, the head of the Asean
Center for Biodiversity (ACB) aired a strong warning for Asean nations to cooperate more fully in enforcing the cross-border transfer of wildlife. The warning is well understood: a bubonic plague outbreak at this time, when the world reels from Covid-19, is the last thing humans would want to see.
There’s a cure
UNLIKE Covid-19, for which there is neither vaccine nor cure yet, the good news about bubonic plague, though, is that it can be treated with antibiotics, as plague is
caused by bacteria and not a virus, said ACB Executive Director Theresa Mundita S. Lim. “They discovered the treatment to this years ago. Treatment for Covid, on the other hand, is still being tested, and management is more symptomatic, meaning you give medication to the symptoms of the disease, as they appear,” Lim, a veterinarian, and expert in zoonotic diseases, said. She maintained that in Southeast Asia, there are existing laws or similar regulations on poaching and illegal wildlife trade among Asean member-states, and a good
level of awareness on the implications of wildlife trafficking. “That is why even in 2018, there was already the Chiangmai Statement on illegal wildlife trade,” Lim, a former DENR-BMB director, told the BusinessMirror in a recent interview via Messenger.
A threat, nonetheless
STILL, she said, bubonic plague remains a threat because the pneumonic form of the plague can easily spread from person to person, and, if left untreated, is fatal. Continued on A2
China is forcing the world to find new ways to deal with it By Iain Marlow, Nick Wadhams & John Follain
D
Bloomberg News
EALING with China is so complex it’s produced its own lexicon: Engagement. Containment. Confrontation. Constrainment. Even “con-gagement.” The word stew reflects the dilemma for governments facing a power that is no longer simply “rising.” The leadership under Xi Jinping believes China is now strong enough that it can forcefully assert its agenda both at home and abroad because it has reached the point it can withstand whatever penalties come its way. Xi’s imposition of a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong despite global outrage, a deadly military skirmish on the border with India and Beijing’s aggressive pandemic-era diplomacy are only the latest examples of
how Western policies have largely failed to shape, slow or stop China.
‘Rethink’
AS the US prioritizes “America First” and the values-based multilateral architecture weakens, countries are increasingly realizing they need a rethink. Until now, strategies have largely fallen into one of two camps: Keep your fingers crossed that China turns into a better actor by pulling it into the global system of rules and institutions, or try and halt it in its tracks by economic, or military pressure. “The open policies toward
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 49.5440
MEMBERS of the People’s Liberation Army honor guard walk past a banner depicting Xi Jinping near the Forbidden City in Beijing, on May 21, 2020. BLOOMBERG
China from the US and European Union were well intended and mutually beneficial, with hopes that China will join, or at least learn to conform to the order of the free world,” said Fernando Cheung, a pro-democracy lawmaker in Hong Kong. “But with growing economic power and military might, it’s becoming apparent that Xi thinks the order under the Chinese Communist Party is superior.” While Covid-19 has accelerated the conversation on China, “the problem is a lack of agreement of what teaming up should look like—not all like-minded governments are all that like-minded when it comes to dealing with the challenges China poses,” said Bates Gill, a professor of Asia-Pacific security studies at Macquarie University in Sydney who has consulted for companies and government agencies. The fissures President Donald Trump has opened with longstanding US allies also hinder a united approach. “The basic building blocks of such a strategy—working Continued on A2
n JAPAN 0.4619 n UK 62.2223 n HK 6.3900 n CHINA 7.0888 n SINGAPORE 35.5971 n AUSTRALIA 34.5173 n EU 56.3959 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.2107
Source: BSP (July 17, 2020)
RALUCA TUDOR | DREAMSTIME.COM
WITH REPORTS OF THE BUBONIC PLAGUE BEING DETECTED IN MONGOLIA AND THE U.S., EXPERTS RAISE THE ALERT ANEW AGAINST TRAFFICKING IN WILD ANIMALS.