DAY 9: ECQ

No, I am not yet scaling the walls of my home ... but I am just about to.

Each time I have the compulsion to do so, I whistle a happy tune.

I do not want to think of the following:

(1) The number of health care workers who have sacrificed their lives to care for the sick.  Yes, it is a great part of their calling.  As doctors, nurses and medical assistants, they swore to their duties to tend to the sick down to the very end.  It is heartbreaking when you hear that it is those who cure who meet their end as heroes.

Yes, they are heroes of 2020.  

There is anesthesiologist who left messages when he realized that he was so badly infected that the inevitable was around the corner.  He left word to friends to watch over his wife --- another medico --- and his son who he would leave behind.  Reading his final words before his passing was devastating --- as it never carried an ounce of regret but instead held onto the responsibility that he vowed to fulfill over and above his personal concerns and interests.

That is a hero.

Then there was the thirty-four year old doctor who literally rose from the ranks.  He finished his medical degree through hard work and scholarships, a breadwinner of his family, the beacon of hope.  This young doctor's life was cut short because one of his patients lied: she did not give an honest account of her medical history, denying vital information that could have pointed to her being exposed to those positive of the virus.

He is another hero.

As there are so many other unnamed doctors and nurses who have also been exposed to the virus and have become PUMs as well, some even in Intensive Care Units after tending the sick, the needy.  Their names need not be enumerated by the medical community is very well aware of who they are and the sacrifice they have gone through to insure that the virus should find containment.

They are all heroes.  And they break my heart.


(2) The suffering that the everyday wage earner is going through now ... and the indefinitely long haul it would take before the lifting of the community quarantine remains unfathomable.

Yes, it is inevitable.  We will still be locked down in our homes past the deadline given by the government not unless there is visible success in "flattening the curve"or a cure is found to eradicate the NCOV19.  Otherwise, the semblance of our normal lives will not be resurrected on Easter Sunday 2020.

There is almost blinded optimism in that ... but I will keep on hoping. And praying.

This is a Catch-22 situation.  People need to stay put so as not to spread the virus: that is the rationale for the buzzwords of the year, "social distancing".  

But people MUST leave their homes to find work, buy food and medicine and brave their daily existence.  The choice is between suffering at home penniless and spared of the virus ... or exposing yourself to the dangers in the streets outside, desperately trying to comply with the protocol.  There is no easy resolution to the dilemma.

The solution should come elsewhere --- by addressing the needs of those who depend on day to day work not only for their sustenance but also their survival.  This is where the national and local government should come in to take care of its citizenry.  At this point we need clear cut plans, blueprints of alternatives and solutions to provide for those disenfranchised by the lockdown. 

We do not need promises, rhetoric or pictorials of politicians announcing to social media that they have stepped out of their homes (parang mga doktor lang raw ang peg) to keep us safe.  Uhm, just a short comment here: that just happens to be THEIR jobs so we don't owe them for that. 

The bigger problem is what lies ahead.

(3) It is as if everything in the world has frozen.  Like an image that has become immobile, lifeless, non-functional on your monitor: in computer terms --- the world hanged.

No economic activity. No productivity. Nothing.

People are forced for their own good to stay in the safety of their homes, rendered helpless to the toxicity of the microbe, under various rules and regulations to curb their activities.   

So what happens next?   The repercussions are unimaginable: business came to a half but people still need to be paid.  People stopped buying non-essentials so there is a spectrum of industries and services which are running on empty for as long as the lockdown continues.  Human needs continue ... but work has stopped.  And for some, work will be gone by the time attempts are made to return to normal.

This leads me to the most dreaded question spinning in my mind.

(4) When will this end?  

Hope that the quarantine will be lifted right after the Lenten Season has become all the more vague.  As the test kits have revealed, more and more cases are arising.  As some of our countrymen do not take the practice of social distancing seriously, the retardation of the contamination rate will take a much longer amount of time than what is projected.  We are back into that Catch-22 situation that worsens the scenario.

I woke up this morning with one of my social media friends starting a discussion as when friends suspected the quarantine will be lifted.  If scientific calculations are to be taken seriously, then the eighteen month projection is ... apocalyptic, to say the least. The very thought of the world on freeze mode for even three months us enough to give one nightmares ... while being a hundred percent awake.

The virus is killing people ... but its aftermath can be the much greater horror.  We do not know the shape of the world and the remnants of its systems when all this comes to an end.

I only wish I can flash forward and look back at the events of the first quarter of 2020 and realize that we have all survived this ... and that history is a menu of lessons to be learned.

But as we live through the present progressive, as we slowly watch the unfolding of events through the wringer, we can only hope for the best.  

I do not want to drown in my pool of paranoia and feast on a diet of worries.

Neither can I escape the fact that his might as well be World War III.