It is an understatement to say that 2022 did not exactly start on the right foot.
Even 2021 bid us bye-bye, we were brought back to Alarm Level 3 --- which bluntly meant that the spread of the virus was starting again.
Four days into the new year, the news was anything but encouraging.
More and more people were getting sick --- not only with the annual season of influenza but most likely the dreaded variant called Omicron.
Four days into the new year, there was a new panic.
Drugstores have ran out of paracetamol as a wild rush has taken place, grabbing every tablet and capsule of Bioflu, Decolgen, Biogesic and what have you to remedy if not protect the body from the assault of the flu and a shield to the virus.
Face-to-face classes have been suspended until the 15th of the month and as per rule, the number of people allowed inside restaurants, barber shops, parlors, cinemas and other enclosed service and recreational areas have been reduced to 30%. That also meant the shrinking of the economic recovery.
Four days into the new year, the Yuletide crowd that filled up the malls and groceries (which adequately provided opportunities for the quicker widespread of the new variant) was suddenly gone.
Because we thought things were going back to normal, we were too excited --- or too tired of being constricted and kept away from each other that we all made a mad rush to the nearest commercial mammon to tell ourselves that happy days are here again.
Well, they are not ... maybe not in the near or immediate future. We're just entering a new cycle.
On the fourth day of 2022, hospitals were again pressing the alarm bells because of the excessive number of patients rushing into the ER, all revealing symptoms of COVID.
Warning shots had been fired compelling those who refused vaccination to stay home, stay put, don't move --- as they would not be allowed to go out in public, enter malls or even interact outside their bubble because they were most vulnerable to any if not all the variants.
While there was still uproar about our Poblacion Girl, more information was revealed that went over and beyond her misbehavior.
Again, it would be grossly unfair to pinpoint our partying balikbayan as to sole reason for this surge.
If she faked the quarantine protocol through some arrangement with some shady characters in a certified hotel, then it could be done by anyone as well ... as long as you either had the connections or whatever it took to get you off the hook ... or both. A little influence would always bring you a long way.
What was more alarming was how many people have done it, how many people are doing it ... how many get away with it. And how others just looked away and pretended that it was not happening. Not until our poster girl for the virus decided to party.
Apparently this was not a new modus operandi because snippets of stories are being heard of others pretending to be quarantined in a specific venue but are either at home or moving in and out of their appointed confinement with least resistance or even encouragement. There were even angered accounts of returning airline passengers going straight to their private cars at the arrival gate to take them home ... and not picked up by vans to be brought to quarantine establishments. Talaga lang, ha?
Realistically speaking, Poblacion Girl could not have done it without her enablers, right? Others are doing it because it has become an option and apparently an open secret that it could be done.
If there was anyone who should receive the greatest blow from the government, then it should be these people --- these enablers who make money out of jeopardizing not only the health of their fellow countrymen but also facilitating the maiming of the economy.
Oh, yes, there will always be entitled, for-all-I-care sort of the moneyed who could not give a f--k about the rest of world outside their air-conditioned universe. But there are those who feast on the thoughtlessness and maybe arrogance of the privileged: these are the leeches, the parasites who make a living at whatever cost even if they have to fester on the inhumanity of others in order to take home their loot.
It is also the system that needs to be re-evaluated to make sure that these malpractices are not in place or perpetuated --- because there is a higher authority safeguarding the proper and rigid execution of the protocols. Since there is absentee quarantine means that ... uhm, somebody is not watching over these venues more closely and with greater consistency, more rigid scrutiny. Hmmmm.
Press releases have been brought out that those violating health protocols will have to deal with the iron hand of the law.
Investigations are being made. Apologies are being sent out --- but these do not change anything.
The surge is here --- and five thousand new cases have been reported today by the DOH --- and a study estimates that by the of January, we can hit forty thousand new cases per day. Diyos ko, huwag po! Huwag po!
There are those who think nothing will come out of all these pronouncements and investigations --- except press releases. Just a lot of drums being banged.
Why? Because people have been numbed by the past where other bigwigs violated the strict protocol requirements and got away with it as if they can just tiptoe away from the scene of the crime and hope that the public will soon forget about their misdeeds.
People have become so blase into thinking that all these creatures caught redhanded with CTV cameras will soon fade into oblivion because the public may not necessarily forgive them but will most certainly forget how their entitlement has cost us risks to our very lives.
People would gloss over the fact that there are very strong connections who did not only allow these loopholes to happen but actually punctured the system to make money out of what they they thought was being maabilidad, mautak, wa-es.
Bluntly put, unless there is closure to these events --- unless there is corresponding punishment to those who deserve the consequences, then this will yet be another exercise in futility.
It shall yet be another manifestation of Malakas and Nagmamaganda overruling Katuwiran and Katarungan.
This is a litmus test of credibility, authority and effectivity for those given the responsibility and matching power.
We hear the barks, so can we please see you guys bite?
In the meantime, we are all holding our breaths (literally) and praying that we can get over this
new surge.
It is like we are living through the myth of Sisyphus. We struggle to get that rock up the hill and flatten the curve ... only to have someone push the boulder right on our faces so we go back to Square One all over again.
To quote a friend in Facebook, "Nakakapagod na itong pagiging resilient, ha?"
Welcome 2022.
