DAY 11 ; ECQ

The eleventh day.  Not yet talking to plants and hearing them answer you back.  My dog has started to shy away from me: I think she is beginning to feel I am harassing her. I guess it is just too much company from her human.

And I was content listening to the Motown sound of my youth while trying to create the semblance of a workout in the mornings.

I was determined to have a relatively quiet day writing until this whole thing about the senator blew right out of the platforms of social media.

More deadly than the virus is the toxic response of netizens to the politicos.  Not that the philosophers and the fools are doing anything that they haven't been doing for the past too many years, but there is a difference when the general population is on self-house arrest.  Bluntly put: all eyes are on the computer monitors and the smartphones.  

Everyone is being updated by Twitter, bedazzled by Instagram stories and Facebook Live.  There are also such a great number doing their own versions of Tik Tok so much so that the platform was so overwhelmed to donate a sizable amount to various charitable causes.

For every Vico Sotto, Marcy Teodoro, Ishko Moreno or even that 23 year old mayor from Alaminos, Pangasinan --- Arth Bryan Celeste --- there is this, uh, menagerie of politicians who have quite succeeded in turning this Coronavirus season into the early ritual of self-crucifixion.

These include:

(a) Blundering politicians who just cannot do anything right in front or behind the eye of the public so much so that every move they make seems to dig a deeper and deeper grave for the future aspirations in governance.

(b)Local unit officials who took the directive of self-quarantine too seriously that they decided to migrate to a completely different dimension, leaving their constituents to fend for themselves and use the proper of faith and prayer for survival. In other words, they have practiced the art of "creative disappearance" so that their presence has ceased from even being virtual.  They have turned completely invisible ... for the sake of their health.

(c) Men and women of privilege who used their position, clout, influence, family name --- or even affiliation to the sanitation officers of the Palace --- to get ahead of everybody.  There is nothing new about this either: My Golly naman ...dis is da Pilipins. It is already integral in Philippine culture raw to practice the art of palakasan, singilan ng utang na loob at pakikisama. So if the politicians get to be ahead of the line in the COVid19 testing, it is only because it is their Divine Right, di ba?  As my Lola would put it, Por que estamos en poder?

Cabin fever apparently shortens the patience of people and netizens have become more unforgiving. Or maybe because people have just had it, so that now in critical times --- when uncertainty clouds every decision to be made --- when even going out to buy sitaw in the grocery can be a question of life or death  (that, of course, is an over dramatizing), then you just can't invest that much tolerance for ngitngit lines like:

(a) "Pasensiya na po. Tao lang."
(b) "Para yon lang?"
(c) "Kilala mo ba kung sino ako? Eh, sino ka ba?"
or the worst of them all ...
(d) "Eh, di wow ..."

You cannot take that especially from people you have elected into office, get their jollies from the taxes that you pay ... then suddenly treat their constituents like they owe them a favor. Not in such terrible times like these ... when people want to be assured, to be led, to be given guidance as to what is best to do next, they do a Houdini act, evaporating from the heart of the problem and perhaps condensing when all this over, celebrating their imaginary leadership.

I had my share of laughs looking at the memes and the videos of mayors being ganged up by netizens.  I had my fill of the speed and genius of the Filipino as humorists when they concoct memes in a record ten minutes flat.  Suddenly posted, then shared, infesting the worldwide net in its spectrum of platforms ... faster than the Coronavirus.

But some things are ANYTHING but funny.

Like the stunt that this senator did. 

I am still trying to figure out what could have been running in his head when he actually went to the hospital to accompany his wife who is about to have give birth via C-Section.

The senator was already symptomatic, having been tested for the virus a few days earlier.  He was very well aware that he needed to be in house quarantine and that in the event that he is identified as virus-positive, then he would be infecting not only the doctors and nurses in the hospital ... but also the other patients, their chaperones and other individuals who may be in his area regardless of number or density.

Was it not the President himself who insisted that everyone stay home, practice personal discretion and discipline in order to defeat the infection?  Was it not the message from Malacanang that night when all this was happening and all the while there was a member of the Upper House breaking the protocol and endangering the lives of the frontliners?

To put this bluntly: the scenario has turned surreal.

More than the virus ... or maybe after the virus, I worry about the aftermath.

The aftermath in terms of economics.  The aftermath in terms of what will be left of the world after it goes on a freeze mode for weeks ... hopefully not months.  The aftermath in terms of the damage that has been created in the moral fabric of governance has been so defined. Because critical times like these show the stuff that people are made of ... and where the best and worst in people are displayed in public so blatantly and even shamelessly.