I ask
hubby what he misses most from life before the Luzon lockdown.
“Ramen,”
he says then, “Eating out.”
I
raise an eyebrow at him. “I expected Nanay
(mother) to be in there somewhere,” I tell him.
He
waves a hand dismissively. “She's first, of course! That goes without saying.”
When
daughter gets up later, I ask her the same thing over breakfast. “Friends,” she
says immediately. She stays up late to go online with friends, sometimes for a
Dungeons and Dragons session. It is fun, but not quite the same as when they
are all in the same room playing, she says.
When
she hears Daddy’s answer, she smiles. “Ramen too, of course. Also Chowking and
Dairy Queen and … so many more,” she says. I tell her I will try to make
Chaofan for her and she is hesitant. She is remembering the time I tried to
recreate their favorite Ramen for them. It was not a pleasant dinner.
She asks
me what I miss. “Just going out,” I tell her.
I do
not mean going out to buy food, which is physically and mentally exhausting
under the lockdown.
What I
really miss is just leaving the house at any time for whatever reason, and without
any fear or thought that I will somehow get infected with the coronavirus
disease of 2019 (COVID-19) and worse, bring it home and infect my loved ones.
We are
still under Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) and there is no guarantee that
we will transition to the slightly less stringent General Community Quarantine
(GCQ) on May 16. After more than a month under ECQ, I am chafing at the bit
just like everyone else, but I know I just have to take this one day at a time.
In
other countries, particularly the U.S., people are protesting against
lockdowns. They are all about their freedom and their right to choose what
happens to their bodies. There are people like that here in the Philippines
too. I see many of them in one FB community group I have joined.
It is
no use talking to them. They are fixated on exercising their freedom to choose how to live their lives - unhampered, unrestricted and able to do exactly what they want to do within reason, just like they did before COVID-19.
I wish
they exist in a vacuum where they are the only ones who get exposed to COVID-19
and run the risk of infection, where no one has to tend to them when they get
infected, and where they cannot infect anyone who does not share their beliefs.
The
reality, however, is that doctors, nurses and other medical personnel have sworn an oath to attend to them and heal them. Somehow, persons they have come into contact
with will also have to be quarantined and monitored.
Worse,
they may be asymptomatic and touch all those shopping carts and those goods on
supermarket shelves and unknowingly infect those who are trying so hard to
observe all the precautionary measures so that they do not bring the dreaded
virus home to their families – those just like me.
They refuse
to acknowledge that when the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases rises because
of people just like them, it will just get worse before it gets better not just
for them but for EVERYONE ELSE, and it will take longer.
Their
noses are so big that they cannot see that their rights end where the rights of others begin.
DoH
update: As of 4 p.m. of April 28, 2020, the Philippines has reported 7,958 confirmed
corona virus cases, including 975 recoveries
and 530 deaths.
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