What’s the most important variable in our recent toil and struggle with the lashing COVID-19 pandemic? National health priority resolutions, government support, societal participation? 

Aside from the human health threat, it is a hard fact that our country faces yet another special problem from the rest of the world – extreme poverty. Setting aside the growing menace of racial discrimination on our fellowmen across the sea, poverty is a struggle that we Filipinos live by every day.

Amidst the pandemic, our fear is not our little to no access to medical care. It is the mediocrity of having little access even to basic needs like food. The fear of starvation is more desperate than dying with the disease. Poverty is a greater challenge that this government needs to address along with the pandemic issues. If not, we cannot really blame the spread of the disease as more people begin to break protocols to keep up with their livelihood. Will they stay at home in hunger, or go out there and wage the risk just to survive? For the marginalized sector, we know that the needs always outweigh the risks.

Why blame the government if you are poor? You people are lazy child-factories who just got served the life that you deserve, you may say.

Remember how a year before the pandemic the government itself robbed the people of the opportunity to fend for their families. Road widening and road clearing brought many establishments literally down to the ground. Sidewalk vendors and peddlers living on a hand-to-mouth were driven out of their stalls, just because the government can. They were forced into venues that cannot accommodate all businesses at once, more so cater to the public consumer. These people are trying to outlive poverty, yet they got nothing but deprivation of their livelihood.

Now enters the pandemic in 2020 which drove more people at the bottom far deeper into the brink of scarcity. With most LGUs still hand-tied to the higher government orders and still lacking the initiatives without money changing hands, the community rises in support of each other. Community pantries are a promising example that many people will benefit from, maybe until the effort gets exploited. There is that heartwarming sense in a scenario of people pulling other people out of the dire situation.

Truly, this pandemic has brought out all of our raw values and brought out our moral standards and upbringing. This is the point where we can gauge the goodness of the people’s hearts with the will to help others survive. And in some sense, the rise of community aids is a wake-up call to the government. There is a gap of failure that public addresses with empty words cannot fulfill. It needs actions congruent to the effort first shown on the earliest stage of the pandemic.

Perhaps acknowledging needs and priorities may help people see through the grimness of the situation. Otherwise, all the effort we have done in the past will be in vain impending a hunger strike. The government cannot just impose lockdowns and expect people to cooperate. Officials will retire to their homes and wait for their paychecks at the end of the day. The people on the lower economic scale do not live like that. They need to hit the street to earn their daily stipend and calm the gnawing beast in their bellies.

Need we criticize the effort of the general public and taint it with suspicion too? If kindness creates ripples, is there a need to stir it in with hatred and divisiveness? Only the sensitive calls the effort overshadowing. Only the paranoid tags it with upheaval.

This may be a sad start of the decade for the masses, but also a hopeful one as we see the goodness of humanity shining through the adversity. The Bayanihan spirit is a deep-rooted cultural value that the sensitive government cannot take away from its people. The Filipinos are poor, but never heartless./WDJ