DAY 68: MECQ

Everybody is talking ... or anticipating the "New Normal".

Bluntly put, it is the world outside our homes that await us until a vaccine is discovered to protect every human on earth from that lethal and oh-so-tricky virus.  The "New Normal" is the way it will be until we can be assured that there is protection  ... and that there is a cure from an invisible enemy who can invade your body from something as simple as shaking the hand of another human being. Or even touching an infected surface where a micro-droplet from somebody asymptomatic and yet sneezed thereby spreading the enemy far too small for the eyes to see.

But somehow there is nothing "normal" about the alternative left for us.  What is even sadder is the fact that we have no choice but to accept that this is reality. We can always remain unwavering in our optimism that a vaccine will be discovered within a few months or a year and we can all go back doing the things we used to do and the way wanted to do them.

Then I caught these little features in YouTube where epidemiologists state that finding the vaccine within a perceivable time span is wishful thinking.

One of these doctors stated that there are so many kinds of corona viruses that have been discovered through the years and not one --- not a single vaccine has been discovered to fight against any of those variations.  It seems that the interest in finding that cure-all comes to a petering halt the moment the epidemic dwindles away.  Maybe COVID19 will be an exception for not the Spanish Flu nor Ebola nor SARS has had so much impact to the world made smaller by technology and more vulnerable precisely for those same reasons.

I keep repeating my mantra: ACCEPT.  ADAPT.  ADVANCE.

It is one way to keep your head above the water .... or remain positive.  It is not about the tragedy but the challenges that lie ahead as we accept that this pandemic is worldwide --- and there is nothing we can do about it.  Then we try to find ways and means of living with these adjusted conditions and adapt to the changes before we can finally ( hopefully, determinedly) advance into the days, months, years to come.

Of course that is more easily said and done when you begin to think of what "the new normal" entails.

Two and a half months of quarantine have changed us.  The fact that we were able to stay home for that length of time (and with the prospect that we are still going to remain inside for some more time) is already something beyond our imagination as late as February this year.  Yes, we were told that this is not a permanent thing and that one day we will step out of our abodes to go back to the way it used to be.  And somehow we are unconvinced.  We know deep inside that gallivanting in a mall, going to the gym or even taking long walks in busy streets will not be available until God knows when.

What is even more painful is to realize that social distancing is heartbreaking.

Yes, this is for the good of the greater number of people.  Stay two meters away from each other.  No handshakes, no high-fives,  no tearful embraces in reunions and goodbyes.  You cannot blow air kisses because you have a face mask. And as one heartbreaking video narrates about missing that "wonderful world" ... we will be living for quite some time incapable of seeing real face to face smiles because we are wearing masks and face shields to protect ourselves from others.

That was when I realized that there is nothing normal about this new state awaiting all of us when we will be set free from our house arrests but with no clear timeline as to when we can really be safe from the lethal effects of COVID19.  Doors are being opened not because we have beaten the virus but to protect the economies of nations from completely collapsing.

It is a choice between life and living ... and the risks are still great so why even pretend that we are about to enter the world with our notion of normalcy. So I was thinking ... how will it be different?  And what are the things we need to determinedly adapt in order to survive?

(1) Schools are now going online or resorting to blended education.  Yes, we thank God for the internet because kids do not have stagnate at home hooked on their video games or turning into TV zombies.  But online education suddenly thrust upon us has its setback.  Lord, we do not have the best internet connection in our beautiful banana republic and there the suddenness of the need for online teaching has caught everybody off-guard.  Admitted not all schools are equipped with the right facilities to accommodate online learning: worse, not all teachers are trained to handle courses online.  Some schools have built-in servers to be used for these classes --- but a great number do not.  So is it straight to Zoom meetings, Webinars, Google Meets?  

Blended education is the best compromise to accommodate social distancing when schools open: this means 50% of the lessons will be taught on a face-to-face basis while the other 50% will be given online.

This is to address the space requirement for social distancing when students return to classes where now the regular classroom shall be cut to one half its size to comply with the minimum of one meter distancing between kids.  But then that is not the be-all-and-end-all of education problems.

(2) Home schooling or Leave of Absence for the next semester has become an option.  Of course parents want to make sure that their kids are safe.  Admittedly, perhaps 80% of kids in MetroManila use public transportation to get to school from their respective homes --- and that has become a major consideration.  Remember that memo saying that to board the MRT or LRT, one should give an allowance of two to three hours because all the coaches will now be designed for social distancing cutting the number of passengers to about to a surmountable few?  My God, that amount of waiting time is tantamount to a flight to Hong Kong.

Besides, how are you sure that the kids will be safe considering their exposure to all the strangers populating the bus stations, train coaches or even that simple jeepney? 

With these looming fears, a great number of parents have opted for home schooling or  asking their kids to go on leave of absence until they feel confident enough to set them free in that virus-infested world again.

This brings about an even much greater problem again.  Enrollment projections for the next semester have dropped.  Rapidly. Drastically, Harmfully.

Another important consideration is that the virus has completely screwed up the economy not only but of the entire world.

I remember at the start of my blogs, I said that the greatest harm of this virus is not only the sheer number of deaths harvested from this pandemic. It is the economic backlash, the meltdown that shall completely shuffle all the equations that were used by the mathematics of capitalism.  In other words, even with just two to three months of economic freeze, businesses are collapsing, closing and undergoing a meltdown never before seen in human history.

OFWS are being flown back because they have lost their jobs.  These are the bagong bayanis who actually fill the national coffer with their dollar remittances and keep our economy afloat.  Now that our premium export has lost the opportunities for the sustenance of their families as well as their future, they have all been brought home safely but sadly with the loss of income to support the needs of their families.  One of those needs is enrollment money for their kids for the coming term.

Yes, business are closing but so are schools.  Word is out that some schools are buckling in to the sheer weight of unplanned and an indefinite timeline of closure.  

(3) Businesses involving a gathering of people are paralyzed if not threatened by bankruptcy.  The first to be hit are those in the food business:  restaurants are suffering because not unless they have a take-out service with the option of home delivery through carrier transports like Grab Food or Lala Moves or Food Panda, then kiss the day goodbye.  Eating out is a social ritual that is the first to suffer ... and it seems like even after everything slowly eases to normal, no one is still going to be seated in restaurants because this is still not permitted.

So whatever will happen to food courts --- or all these fastfood outlets where people converge and have their daily dosage of conversation?  Everybody has opted to stay home, have their food delivered ... or savor home-cooked meals.

The same goes for the entertainment business.

The entertainment business was caught at the time that it was preparing for its 2020 line-up.  All that is thrown out of the window now for three good reasons.

One: cinema houses are shut down.  We do not know when they will be allowed to open for screenings.  But if and when they do, only 30% of its capacity will be utilized to accommodate social distancing.  Now how is a producer to make money if at full house you only have one third of the income generated per screening?  And when will the cinema houses be considered safe to open for exhibition of feature films?

All these compounded questions seem to point to a discouraging scenario for the rest of 2020.  As mentioned earlier, all plans for the year have been scrapped because of the difficulty of shooting and taping (to be discussed next) plus the lack of venues where films can be shown.  Ancillary rights, yes ... meaning you can sell the film to streaming platforms, regional exposures, etc. but these would never be enough to cover the escalating cost of shooting a movie. Or even taping a TV series.

Remember that movie houses have been locked down since mid-March, which means over two months of zero income from cinemas for producers.  As for TV networks, putting aside the disenfranchisement of ABS-CBN, the other network --- GMA7 --- has also been suffering from a reduced commercial placements because the bigger world of business is frozen.

Two:  Of course people cannot shoot movies.  Or tape teleseryes.  Gatherings are discouraged and to make a movie or shoot a single episode of a teleserye takes literally a village.  All that has come to a stop because it has become dangerous. The danger comes not only from being exposed to locations that may be in the periphery of the red spots of COVID19 positives but also the fear that a number of virus-carriers are asymptomatic.

That is the biggest threat of the virus: you are not sure who is sick or infected ... and neither is he or she aware that despite the veneer of good health that the person has actually become a shredder, We do not know who has been infected so we assume everybody is afflicted as we hide behind face masks and shields.

Since shootings and tapings require so many people who need to be secured and assured to be virus-free, the protocols created for the return-to-work situation has become expensive --- raising budgets to as much as 30% whereas producers are not even sure where to get their money back.

Third: Because of the lockdown, people have discovered (since their options have become very limited) to entertain themselves with other options that do not require them to go out of their homes.  Cinema watching was already waning worldwide ... and this had to happen.  The pandemic added another nail to the slowly encasing coffin of watching movies in cinemas as people discovered the joys of streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Plus and the local IWant.   The bigger question now is ... if you open the gates again and tell people that they can go back to the malls and the cinema houses, will they?  

Here we are not only talking about fear of the unknown but the fact that we have all changed in the month and a half of being locked in our homes, wearing our pambahays and realizing that a new pair of rubber shoes or a wonderful pair of jeans are really non-essentials in the language of human existence at a time of the pandemic.

We cannot hug our loved ones.  We have limited our meetings with friends in Zoom sessions.  We buy our food via delivery.  We look at tall, empty buildings and stretches of desolation in streets knowing that these are remnants of days gone by ... and may never be retrieved.

There is nothing normal about the new normal.  Maybe, just maybe, the greater challenge is to make sure that we have full and filled lives in a normalcy defined by restrictions and social distancing.  Can we even call that normal?