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The Good and Bad Side-Effects of Coronavirus

The Good and Bad Side-Effects of Coronavirus
Fr. Shay Cullen
20 March 2020

The good side-effects we can see during this medical crisis brought about by the coronavirus is the love, concern and care shown by the dedicated caregivers, nurses and medical workers. It is phenomenal. The goodness and love of millions of humans has come shining through. There are neighbourhood help movements growing online. In Canada, an online network is helping the elderly, neighbours are helping neighbours. In Italy, people are singing from balconies to cheer up those in quarantine. People are changing to a healthy diet also.

Preda Fair Trade Dried Mango fruit with loads of Vitamin C and no chemicals are selling fast in the UK and Ireland. People are changing to a healthy diet to strengthen their immune system to fight off and prevent the flu and hopefully coronavirus.

The Preda dried mangos are available online for ordering if you can’t leave home. Go to the www.forestfeast.com online and ask a friend to do it. If you can go shopping to Tescos, Dunnes or Waitrose, you will find the Preda Dried Mangos there under the Forest Feast brand. Buy lots. All earnings from sales go to support the abused children rescued by Preda Foundation and protect them from the Coronavirus. You are doing good for all.
But the greatest good is the dedication of caregivers and medical workers. Eighty-year-old Elizabeth would not survive the coronavirus if not for Margi, her devoted caregiver. Everyday, Margi Gonzalez risks getting infected on her rounds visiting her many patients in the community center. She treats any sores, takes blood pressure and temperature and sees that they are comfortable, fed, and taking her medicine on time. Elizabeth and others are being monitored for the coronavirus after one member of the community tested positive. Thousands of caregivers like Margi are slowing the spread of the deadly contagious infection. She was a migrant from the Philippines to Britain.

There are many good people like Margi on the front line. Many are former migrants or refugees, who fled poverty, oppression, fear and suffering for a new, better life. Now the rich, developed nations benefit from their skills and service. That is a positive result of a sad history of human rights violations and injustice. Margi was marked as a protest leader and fled the death squads employed by a mining firm to quell the protest against the mining corporation taking over their farmland.

That is the paradox, the poor flee as migrants or refugees the hardship caused by the greedy multinational corporations supported by their governments. They exploit the natural resources of poor nations in cahoots with the local corrupt ruling families. These three are the corrupt players behind every conflict. They drive the poor to become migrants and refugees. They in turn become the caregivers of the nation that exploited and harmed them.

Another positive outcome of the disastrous impact of the coronavirus is the lock-down and restricted international travel. The end to cheap flights and the grounding of thousands of planes, strict screening, setting up roadblocks, demanding IDs, all has a positive effect. This helps to curb human trafficking of young girls and boys into Western countries from Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. It is the modern slave trade that has hopefully been slowed.

In an overnight decree, governments banned any and all travel of most people, including the travel of sex offenders, pedophiles and sex tourists and paedophiles on child rape holidays. That is another kind of epidemic. There is no specific law against it. There should be. As the multinationals rape the land of its minerals, the rich paedophiles come and rape the children. Preda Foundation is fighting this and rescuing the child victims for healing. Preda Fair Trade helps us in this fight as serious as coronavirus. You can help, too.

The young girls and boys are lured into servitude with false promises of well-paid jobs by mafia-like networks. The victims are held in debt bondage and forced to work in the Philippines or rich countries for little or no pay. They are slaves, threatened with beatings and harm to their families in their home countries if they don’t cooperate and become slaves or sex workers. Preda Foundation rescues and heals many.

Thousands of descendents of Irish migrants are in the medical profession around the world now fighting coronavirus. From 1845 to 1849, starving Irish migrants fled from British colonial exploitation of Ireland and the famine that they caused and allowed. British politicians and families had taken Irish land by force and became rich. The Irish were impoverished. They fled as refugees and migrants to America.

The United States was then a land of freedom, hope and opportunity for the oppressed and the poor. Thousands of Irish fought and died in the civil war against slavery. Now, under Trump, it is a closed fortress ruled by an anti-migrant white supremacist clique incapable of responding strongly and correctly to the coronavirus pandemic and allowing it to spread.

We all are challenged to fight the coronavirus by avoiding all contamination by self-quarantine, hand washing, keeping social distance, and getting tested when protocols require. We must respect, honor and support those who are risking all to help us win.

www.preda.org

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Fr. Shay Cullen

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About the Founder
Profile photo of Fr Shay Cullen
Fr. Shay Cullen

Shay Cullen is a Missionary priest from Ireland, a member of the Missionary Society of St. Columban and Founder and President of Preda Foundation since 1975.

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