Fierce Fears

Some business establishment or organization is going to pounce on this weekend as an opportunity to dress up in scary costumes, get together in costume parties, have children in costumes go around to ask for candies, and maybe generate some extra income from such events. More recently, the costumes have become not necessarily scary or spooky. As long as they’re costumes, from superheroes to cartoon characters, they would do. Halloween isn’t really indigenous to Filipino culture, or to what Filipino culture has become after Hispanic and American acculturation. In our deepest roots, the twilight of October to November is a solemn time for the family to come together to remember the dead. Even if it’s a tradition institutionalized by Spanish friars, beneath “Todos los Santos”, we genuinely remember the dead.

We don’t really natively celebrate this time for scares and spooks. But, if that’s your thing, the whole nation has had our more than fair share of fears and frights these past weeks. We have had the scary storms that now make everyone pack their stuff up to store them on the second floor, the scarily now sporadic earthquakes, and this creeping unconfirmed flu outbreak. Laguna province, Lucena, Quezon, Roxas, Capiz, Ternate and Trese marteres in Cavite schools have suspended face-to-face classes to shift to alternative learning modes from a couple of days to weeks due to reportedly thousands of cases which are like flu. What is this? Are we supposed to feel uneasy because authorities are not sure if these cases are really flu or just like flu? I suppose, school children have been sneezing and coughing. I have come across elementary age children who sneeze repeatedly, and/or cough like boulders were shaking on their throats. But, thousands of cases? Seriously? That is really alarming. If we mark those places with dots on a map, it might look like the spread of the places which were rocked by the recent earthquakes.

Since the Covid-19 community quarantine which was a euphemism for lockdown, there have been opposing views on suspension of face-to-face classes which continued in intense heat and heavy rains. Your mileage may vary. Personally, I congratulate the officials in the said areas for taking the stand in placing priority on health over the school calendar. Some sectors would resist the suspension of in-person classes passionately to the death. But keeping the kids at home is just but logical. The sick students would be able to rest and recover, and the chain of contagion would be cut.

If you’re thinking that multiple cases of sick students is just a school problem. Your mind may be missing out on the reality that these sneezing and coughing children would come across teachers, parents, school personnel, vendors, drivers and everyone in between who individually could in high probability transmit the virus to their own social circles. If we draw the connections in diagrams, the lines would soon form webs that wrap entire communities of towns, cities and provinces. So, this is a community concern.

Now, these concerned citizens are now considering going back to wearing face masks and getting anti-flu shots. I say, by all means, go ahead. These should be no issues. Mask up the masses. What a relief that in our neck of the woods of the world, wearing a face mask is not anything political. Get those flu shots. Are there anti-vaxers around? I hope we have gotten rid of those conspiracy theories. Let me recall of what I heard then? They said, the vaccine would turn us into zombies, would get us sicker, would eventually kill us. I heard one theory that goes that in two years’ time, people who got the vaccine would succumb to death. Most of us got the shots in 2020 or 2021. It has been four to five years since. We’re still alive and kicking the can. There have not been any report of a zombie apocalypse looming across the horizon. There had not been an epidemic of people getting from the vaccine after the pandemic. We’re still alive. Some of us have even been alive enough to suck government funds through corruption.

Locally, the decision on the suspension of face-to-face classes have been left to schools. So, what would happen is some schools could suspend, some schools may not. So, if we’re looking at protecting the whole community from the invasion of disease by building walls around the city, some parts of the wall may be heavily guarded, and some parts may be open because we would have different interpretations of defense, because the decisions have been left to different groups. I suppose, someone among the authorities think that’s an efficient way of protection and defense. In that case, that leaves every man for himself.

Proverbs 2:11: “Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you.”