DAY 20: ECQ

Day 20 - And there are already talks that the Enhanced Community Quarantine (a beautiful euphemism for the more hardcore LOCK DOWN ) is bound to be extended for a number of weeks.

I am not surprised not am I against it.  It is not that I am presently doing cartwheels as expressions of uncontrollable joy (imagine that ... more weeks of doing more of the same inside the house ) but because it is the most logical thing to do.  If we want this virus to lose its potency, then we must stop going around offering our throats to serve as hosts for their excited procreation.

After three weeks of literally not going any farther than the front yard, there are indeed a lot of lessons learned and a lot of things made very, very clear.

I mentioned this posting on my wall entitled THE THINGS THAT COVID-19 MADE CLEAR which I tackled yesterday.  Why?  Because what was enumerated did not only make a lot of sense but shook me into a new level of reality, knowing that this is not an coincidence. There are lessons meant to be learned from being confined in the walls of your home --- so much so that your life, the entire planet --- will never be the same again when they finally set us free.

So let me continue.

(8) Children hold a privileged place in nature. 

Even while the virus was slowly making itself known in Wuhan, one this was made very clear. It was most dangerous for the older stratum of the population.  The older you are, the more you are vulnerable.  Those who are sixty and above are susceptible but those seventy and over are greatly endangered.

Weakness in the immune system facilitates the exponential multiplication of the virus ... in the same manner that it spreads with the same vigorous force and number, asymptomatic at the start so that you have what they call "shedders" going around, not knowing they are positive and spreading the COVID-19.

The younger you are the stronger is your resistance for the virus.  But that does not mean that children are exempted all together but they have much stronger chances of surviving compared to their grandparents.

In other words, the virus is in its own way testing the survival of the fittest  This is not a free lottery based on luck but measured by one's preparedness for health crises.

This all leads us to realize that children are seemingly exempted because they have an immune system geared to protect them for a whole life ahead.  And we should treasure these children because nature has selectively protected them from this plague.

Yet there is something about this pandemic that (until this very moment) still baffles me.  This can be summarized by the next point.

(12) Toilet paper is more important than food.

Somebody should really explain this to me.

Maybe decades from now when sociologists look back and analyze the human response to the threat and then eventually the epidemic, they can explain why humans actually scrambled down the aisles of supermarkets and wholesale stores grabbing as many rolls of toilet paper that can last a supply of two reincarnations.

Could it be very threat of not being able to properly handle the situation at a latrine having nothing to finalize an act of important cleansing?  If there is one thing that has been proven by these unusual (to surreal) turn of events, then it is the fact that a number of people have not discovered the joys of the bidet.

Videos of housewives having life-or-death brawls to claim about two dozen rolls of toilet paper is something which requires a dissertation, perhaps pointing to the validity of the Darwinian theory of evolution.

Now for something more serious.

(13) Partner networks bring us closer together but it is also the means to creating panic.

I am mentally calculating the number of hours I am plugged into the worldwide web ... and social media.

In most critical times such as these, social media has become an imperative and even made to look and sound indispensable.

How could we have survived --- nay, how could have our work continued if it were not for the joys of Facebook Messenger video chats or Zoom or whatever application there is out there in the universe to bring us together without physically threatening infection?

How could we have kept our sanity if it were not for the linkages created in Facebook, Twitter or Instagram?  And yet these same instruments meant to make the world smaller, more defined and accessible has also become the instrument of fear mongering and panic.

Have you ever tried imagining this pandemic without social media?  Apparently not.  About forty years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine making calls outside the power of the landline --- or sending electronic messages beyond pagers.  But all of that has been literally extinct and primitive with the access to social media.

And look where it has brought us?  Look at how, instead of bringing the people to work as a common force, social media has yielded such divisiveness, such contempt, such intolerance.  Such prejudice. And so many lies.

In the age of "alternative truth" (thank you, Kellyanne Conway), there is no such thing as lying.  There is just "relative facts" and, boy, these past few years we have made icons out of pigs and banshees who brandish lies and make them sound like words carved in stone.

This leads me to another point.  At the height of the insanity of this pandemic, what has become more dangerous? The virus or the fear mongering that has created such paranoia and platforms for neuroses. Never in my life have I imagined myself spraying a mixture of 10% Chlorox and 90% water on canned goods brought in from the grocery ... or literally bathing the slippers used outside in disinfectants. 

We are not only going to end up suffering from agoraphobia when this is over ... we will also be so O-C and damaged to be germophobes.  (PS: it will take me about six months to be able to ride an elevator again with confidence.  I work in a building where our office is on the twelfth floor and that will replace a session of the gym each day when work is finally allowed.)

(21) We started to appreciate the great gesture of trust that means shaking hands.

We have always taken this very simple and somewhat everyday gesture for what it is worth. We never gave much importance to a pat, a hug or a handshake.

But now the sheer act of physical contact means so much.  

We realize how it is to interact with one another through the coldness of the windows of zoom or video chats or Skype.  We have taken physical contact for granted ... until it has become taboo. With latest research, even talking to each other can possibly create an exchange of the virus in microdroplets floating in the space between two in conversation.

The things that a contaminated individual touches or may have provided droplets in acts of sneezing or coughing can be potentially dangerous.  And we can never know who is positive because this bug can be in you for days without you knowing or feeling anything.

So we have decided to have social distancing to protect ourselves from each other.  And that is perhaps the most painful consequence that this virus has brought to us aside from stealing loved ones who die alone in great pain.

It is the mere thought that we have become walking time bombs that a mere handshake can be lethal ... that makes these times all too distressing and beyond sad.

( The conclusion of analyzing these talking points will be provided tomorrow. )