A lot of things are worth keeping around. Quite a few more are worth keeping around indefinitely. Some of those we invited into our lives, and some came uninvited, and yet, we have welcomed.
Then there are those that come to us which we never invited, nor will we ever welcome. And because they stay anyway, without any way to expel them, a terrible pressure starts building in us that later translates into hopelessness and despair, and then anger before we finally are not able to control ourselves in blind rage.
CoViD-19 is one of those things–uninvited, unwelcome, demanding, indiscriminate, unforgiving. It is now testing our mettle.
Since the coronavirus crisis started, we have gone through, hopefully, a temporary transformation in our way of life.
Never have we spent more time in our homes, waiting for an unseen enemy to pass us by, and die a natural death.
Never have we done anything like this because of something, anything–an enemy that we cannot see, and cannot even yet kill even if we did. We are keeping ourselves inside our houses for the sake of others, an act that would have made us the most uniquely caring people in the world, if it weren’t part of a collective effort to escape CoVID-19.
It is unfortunate that our actions now will never happen in pandemic-free times. The humanity shown by people to each other, and the government’s gestures of “concern” for the welfare of the citizenry all seem too superficial, and many times, as we’ve seen, have caused more uneasiness than reassuring calm.
The “Plague” or the “Black Death” killed anywhere from 75 to 200 million people between the years 1347 and 1351. At that time, there was no science to put to bear against it, so people turned to prayer.
All told, it reduced the world’s population by about 21 percent. The bacterium that caused it, Yersinia pestis, was transmitted throughout Eurasia and Northern Africa by vectors traveling on the trade routes.
At that time, there was no understanding of how the plague killed, or how it was spread. Those afflicted had no idea how widespread it was, or that it had killed hundreds of thousands, even millions in other countries, or that they themselves would also die. It was one of the darkest times in human history.
Yet, it is talked about less than the wars of history. Humanity seems to have forgotten that no war has ever claimed as many lives in as long a period of time.
Even in those early years, man had come to realize that the best protection from the disease was to stay in their houses, and not mingle with the rest of the population who may have been infected or, as they said then, punished by God. Unfortunately, they did not do this early enough into the pandemic.
Today, we have the science but to find the vaccine would still take time.
In the meantime, people will die from it. A pandemic must claim a compulsory toll, as we’ve seen through history.
Right now, all we can really do is perform the necessary stopgap measures like quarantine and physical distancing. Even then, the toll must be paid somehow before a vaccine is found.
The coronavirus was at first talked about as if it was as commonplace as the flu, also caused by a virus, that mankind has learned to live with.
In the past 40 years alone, mankind had survived pandemics like HIV/AIDS, SARS, H1N1/09, MERS, EBOLA, and Zika virus.
Then, in disbelief, the world gradually realized that, yes, CoViD-19 is a new pandemic that is posing a new danger to mankind which, unlike the common flu, does not resolve itself.
Like the rest of the world, we, too, closed our international and domestic borders. We locked down cities, and then provinces, all in fear that we would be afflicted as well.
Self-preservation is what this is about. The best defense we have against it for now is to isolate ourselves from others so that the CoViD-19 virus will not have anything to latch on to whenever it is loosed from a vector.
The idea being that if it had no other human to infect, it would simply die on its own.
It has been determined that the virus is spread through droplets which may be expelled from a host or a vector, a probable distance of up to six feet, therefore, the social distancing recommendation of about six feet. Simple?
As it turned out, at least here in the Philippines, this recommendation is difficult for people to follow. In almost all instances, in fact, it is not followed at all.
A step up from simply closing our borders, the government has been forced to impose Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ), sort of like saying, “If you don’t heed general quarantine, maybe you’ll obey an ECQ.”
However, did it work? For the most part, and in some places, it may have worked, but from what I have seen, there are huge pockets of people out there who disregard it, maybe due to ignorance or necessity, but I’m sure not because they are not afraid to die.
Then again, I can liken it to a smoker who cannot find a reason to quit, only to regret, after a diagnosis of emphysema, or worse, lung cancer. By then, though, it would be too late.
Are ECQ violators unable to imagine catching the coronavirus, and then spending every second of their remaining life trying to catch every tiny gasp of air, just to live that much longer?
I think so. And because of that, they put themselves and others in danger.
I miss going out. I miss seeing my friends, eating out, going on trips, just moving around town. Would I prematurely break quarantine because of the itch to do those things? No!
I even think that more stringent measures ought to be imposed, and processes devised to determine exactly when to lift such measures because right now is simply not the time.
If you go out now, on those permitted occasions when you buy your necessities, what you will see are people who seem never to have been told about a single precautionary measure, foremost of which would be physical distancing.
If they are out every single turn they get, maybe it is because of necessity.
But I don’t believe necessity will make one forget caution. I don’t think that the need to buy groceries would take precedence over the need to preserve life.
However, the people I’m talking about seem to fall under this assumption, and therefore, would probably need more drastic measures imposed upon them.
Whereas there may already be such measures, violations of the same do not carry consequences heavy enough so as to serve as deterrence.
Put quite simply, people need something to be afraid of, before they will start to behave accordingly. Like too much absence from work could get an employee fired, so the fear of being fired makes the employee control the absence.
To say that I dread dying sounds pretty dramatic, but I really do. Who doesn’t?
But if I must die from CoViD-19, I don’t want my death caused by someone else–someone who didn’t heed physical distancing and came too close to me at the grocery store.
That’s why when people come too close to me, I tell them straight to move away from me.
I think everyone should, without hesitation, no matter who it is they tell or how many. After all, it is my life I’m protecting. It’s up to them to protect theirs, too.
Unfortunately, though, most people just stare at me, and I know they’re sporting a stupid smile behind their masks. How can we strip people of that stupid smile? That is the million-peso question.
The City has now gone into overdrive as far as the enforcement of the ECQ, but there are still too many lapses.
On Monday when I went to Robinsons, there were people from Bais City who wanted to go inside to the grocery store. The security personnel did not let them in because they did not have the requisite passes.
According to the City Command Center, they weren’t even supposed to be in the City. So how were they able to get through the checkpoint? Another big lapse!
And what about the “parking boys” who continue to roam the boulevard? And all the Command Center can say is, “You have to understand the City is pretty big, and we don’t have the people to man all places.”
But they don’t have to. All they would really need is for a patrol car to go around at random times and really pick up those “parking boys” and keep them in jail for a day. After the second or third time doing this, word of it will spread, the action would have created a deterrent, and the problem would be solved.
The ECQ has been extended, and I think that is a good move.
However, I also think that for it to be as effective as hoped, the people have to be equally as serious about it as the government. How can they be, though, when it is government’s responsibility to create that sense in its people, but has not done anything toward that end?
People don’t always need niceties. Sometimes, leaders have to demonstrate their resolve by doing actions that are considered harsh and unbending. Only then will they come across their followers as serious, and maybe worth following.
I don’t like the way it is now, but I would chock it all up to necessity–the necessity to survive.
We should all be for survival and everything to achieve it. Everyone must come out of this crisis alive and healthy. After all, where’s the fun in life with no one else to enjoy it with?
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