"Caution Fatigue"

(Part of an ongoing account started on March 13, 2020 of how the spread of COVID-19 in our country and our government’s response has affected our lives.)

We went through a three-day weekend since Friday, May 1, was a holiday.

But these days, it just seems like there’s nothing to define holidays from regular days, weekends from weekdays or day from day, if not for night.

Yes, I am getting depressed.

I know I do not show it. I get up and get all the things that need to get done. These days, meals are the only things that break up the day. We have breakfast before hubby starts working; I interrupt him at noon so we can have lunch; he wraps up the day’s work when I call him for dinner.

It’s the same with daughter. I interrupt whatever she is doing for the day for meals. They welcome the breaks. Otherwise, it would be just one long, uninterrupted flow before night fall.

But my spirit is heavy. Even during the weekend, when the family gathered for card games, it is an effort to focus on “21” or “41” and all the combinations I am supposed to come up with – which do not really matter since we are not playing with bets.

Jacqueline Gollan, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, has coined a name for this phenomenon based on her 15 years of research into depression, anxiety and decision-making: “caution fatigue.”

Words. Nice, but words just the same. I am supposed to eat and sleep right, exercise and pursue a passion or interest or anything I never had the time for before the lockdown. It is also suggested that I rebuild my routine. I get more depressed.

I try to shrug off my depression and keep busy. Since we are short on fruits and vegetables, I head for the road outside our village gate. It is days past April 30, when the barangay lockdown is scheduled to be lifted. My suki (store that I patronize) should be accessible by now.

It is not. The military men at the checkpoint set up on the street tell me their assignment has not changed so the lockdown is still in effect. They have no idea until when the barangay lockdown is extended. They will just align with the government-imposed ECQ on the National Capital Region, which is scheduled to end on May 15.

The village guard smiles at me behind her mask when she sees me return to the pedestrian gate. I am a familiar face to her so she had tried to warn me, but I had told her that I was going to try my luck, anyway.

She shares that someone from the village had managed to get through the checkpoint, but roving military men had caught on to her. She’d been led to the barangay office, where they took a photo of her and took away her quarantine pass, but not before making her watch a video on the effect of the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19).

We tell each other to keep safe and I drive to a small wet market inside the village. I am horrified to see a line spilling out into the road.

May is one of the hottest months of the year in the Philippines. The weather bureau says temperatures reached 38^oC yesterday. I am sure it feels hotter than that since it is almost noon and the sun is fiercely beating down on the heads of many who are not even carrying umbrellas.

I go back home and crawl into my hole.

DoH update: As of 4 p.m. of May 4, 2020, the Philippines has reported 9,485 confirmed corona virus cases, including 1,315 recoveries and 623 deaths.