DAY 10: ECQ

Last night, with the hope of amusement, I ended up terrorizing myself before I went to bed.

I watched the movie CONTAGION, starring Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow to frighten myself into utmost restlessness.  I have already seen this film of Steven Soderbergh years ago.  

When I watched this movie nine years ago, it was a curious experience: a virus outbreak coming out of chance because (spoiler alert) a displaced bat provided material for a hungry piglet to eat resulting to a mutant product that was transferred to humans.  \

Why?  Because somebody did not wash his hands.  Well, for the record, Patient 1 contracted her sickness from Macau ... not Wuhan. 

I have been "terrorized" by similar tropes in all these zombie and dystopian movies and tv shows of late, from WORLD WAR Z to TRAIN TO BUSAN.  And if you have read Stephen King's phone book thick novel about Armageddon entitled THE STAND, then you would have identified "the flu" as the culprit to end a substantial population of the planet earth for the final battle between Good and Evil to take place.

Bill Gates talked about this in his TED TALKS five years ago but nobody listened.  Or took it all too seriously.

We were still stuck to the idea that nuclear weapons will decimate a substantial population of the earth --- so we had our eyes on all these Big Bosses running Powerful Nations play their Game of Thrones.  Gates was right: the artillery did not involve guided or long distance missiles.  The game changer were microbes.

The resolutions in movies about biological tragedies come handy.  Somewhere along the line, the heroes win ... the martyrs are honored, bravery is celebrated.  Just like in real life.  Yet real life is not like movies.  The answers do not come conveniently and convincingly in Act III when the story reaches its end and the conclusion is reached, the lesson illustrated.

Vaccines are not discovered, tested and developed within the span of one hundred minutes running time of a full length feature.  They take much, much longer ... involving the loss of more lives by the day.

Real life is belonging to the "present progressive"--- when each morning you wake up, realizing that it will be more of the same day in house arrest because of the Enhanced Community Quarantine implemented by the government.  

Where I live there is a "total lock down" added to the fact that the city has decided to go on a twenty-four hour curfew. That is a euphemism for a "really, really total lock down." Which means I cannot even walk my dog or simply move elsewhere to another location to change the scenery. Never in my so many years of human existence have I felt so helpless ... and useless.

Yes, maybe I can use the time to read the books I bought, write the scripts I have always wanted to write ... or even go back drawing, using the tomes of coloring books I have purchased with the pencils, ballpoint pens.  I try to understand why I cannot focus ... but that does not take much thought to decipher.

At this point, there is no certainty. I no longer know what to expect. 

Not only are we not sure if the 12 April deadline will truly find us free from our quarantine ... but the point of the matter is that as I write this, the epidemic has not peaked in the country.

We do not know if we are oh so lucky to only run third in the region behind Thailand and Indonesia with a little over five hundred confirmed cases and not (yet)forty casualties.  But we are not sure if these are the real numbers because there is no mass testing being done. Yet.  We hope it remains that way ... and that we do not surge in number like what is happening in key cities found in other countries.

We can never be sure when this will be over.  

We do not know what kind of world to expect when this pandemic settles down and becomes part of our traumatic collective memory.

There are too many lessons being taught ... and we are not sure either if people are getting the message about the people they have chosen to put into power, what they are doing ... and what could have been done.  Better yet, we ... no, I ... can only pray that people do see beyond speeches, gimmickry and popularity the next time they install someone in a position of power and responsibility.

Amidst the uncertainty, there are heroes being created.  There are natural born leaders being identified.

There are also the scumbags, douche bags, imbeciles, cretins and banshees who are as toxic as the NCov19 and who we hope through the wisdom if not the anger of the people can eradicated the next time the Filipinos go to the polls.

In the meantime, let us focus on the here and now.  There are no convenient short cut conclusions to the narrative that the NCov19 is creating.  It is a constant unfolding ... and heartbreak.

Unlike CONTAGION or even TRAIN TO BUSAN, real life has no closing credits.   Just the next chapter called the following day. And clinging onto the ship of life with a rope called hope.