“The general fact is that the most effective way of utilizing human energy is through an organized rivalry, which by specialization and social control is, at the same time, organized co-operation.” – Charles Horton Cooley

MORE Electric and Power Corporation (MORE Power) is like a soul without a body.

In order to exist and function normally in the material world, it needs a body.

Panay Electric Company (PECO), on the other hand, still has its body intact but the soul is now wandering.

A crisis of colossal proportion erupts when MORE Power wants and insists to inhabit inside PECO’s body.

Claiming “it has a soul of its own”, PECO defiantly and forcefully shows recalcitrance as it rejects MORE Power’s “consolidation” try.

PECO, as the body, thinks it is more of an invasion and an attempt to “power grab” and totally take over someone’s body.

If MORE Power, as the soul, wants to legitimize its own existence, it must find its rightful body and co-exist with me, demands the PECO.

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The caveat is, once PECO, as the body, allows MORE Power, as the soul, to integrate, PECO will lose not only its body but its wandering soul will have no more chance to reunite with the body.

But to PECO’s chagrin, MORE Power sought the divine intervention and the latter decreed that MORE Power, as the soul, must not only integrate but occupy PECO’s body.

After a partial “invasion” of the body has commenced, PECO petitions the “higher gods” to reverse or stop the decree of the “lower gods.”

PECO views MORE Power’s presence in its internal system as an “exorcism” or the expulsion or attempted expulsion of a supposed evil spirit from a person or place.

Will the “higher gods” order to drive away the soul (MORE Power) from the newly acquired body?

Or they will sustain the decree and ask the “conquered” body (PECO) to accept “defeat” and pave the way for the total take over?The “higher gods’” decision is more interesting.

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SOME of my friends in Washington state and the neighboring Vancouver in Canada started to panic on Saturday when news broke out early on February 29 that a male coronavirus patient (wrongfully identified earlier as a female) has died, marking the first death in the U.S. from COVID-19, the illness associated with the virus.

Three of them work in a health center and in a nursing home. They are all females. They asked me to confirm the report even if they have already monitored the news in their local media sources.

It’s confirmed.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was sending out information that it was responding to “the first possible outbreak” of the respiratory illness in a long-term care center in Washington.

The death was not associated with that facility.

Health officials in Washington said 27 patients and 25 staff members at the center have symptoms associated with COVID-19.

The Life Care Center of Kirkland said in a statement that new patients and visitors were being turned away, and patients and staff “with symptoms or who were potentially exposed are quarantined.”

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It was reported that the person who died was a man in his 50s with underlying health conditions, and there was no evidence he contracted the virus through travel, health officials said. They suspect domestic “community spread” of the disease, a new phase for the United States that began this week on the West Coast.

U.S. diplomatic officials said a 60-year old U.S. citizen diagnosed with the disease died Feb. 6 at Jinyintian Hospital in Wuhan, China.

The number of Americans who have so far contracted the virus, most overseas, rose to 69 Saturday, according to an NBC News tally.

Shortly after the announcement of the Washington death, President Donald Trump held a White House news conference to announce that the United States is issuing more travel restrictions and warnings to help prevent the spread of the virus.

He also said he is meeting with pharmaceutical executives to discuss work toward a coronavirus vaccine.

The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo