Improvement on the Movement?

A neighbour tested positive for you know what. But he roams around the neighbourhood, even entering neighbor’s homes to supposedly have a chat for a minute or two. I guess this must have been his usual routine before social distancing became a concept. So, why is he allowed to walk about when he supposedly tested positive? I don’t know. Maybe the report of the results has not reached the authorities yet.

Tenant also tests positive. But she voluntarily goes to the hospital. But she gets sent home. She returns to her apartment unit and locks herself up with the windows open for the neighbors to avoid. She was already in the hospital. Why did they have to send her home. Are they running out of beds now?

If tenant has been infected, there is a bad chance that landlady is too. She tries to isolate herself. But apparently, she couldn’t help herself in her confinement; and starts to go around, in the fear of losing out on the potential income she could earn. Heck, she may have even gone around to feast on the fiesta. When a friend reminded her about her home quarantine, the landlady expressed sentiment of the unacceptability of solitary detention and argued her point away by citing that people don’t know that she has close contact with a person with Covid- 19 anyway. Well, she has a point there, on the part that most people would not want to be confined. After all, who would voluntarily want to be under house arrest? But on the other hand, should not one care about the consequences of one’s actions and further ramifications?

These are real-life events of actual people whom you could have come across the street, sat beside inside a jeepney separated by barriers of a material which typically are used to wrap textbooks and notebooks of students back in the age of face to face classes, or stood beside along the cashier counter when buying groceries. These are actual people with the virus who could have transmitted it to your person and in turn you could have transferred to your family whom you sat close to or possibly spoken to in close proximity, and possibly caused the infection towards disease and potentially something worse. These persons who are in need of medical attention remain mobile among the vulnerable population maybe because the contact tracers have not caught up with them yet. Maybe they’re doing it on alphabetical order and the last names of these contacts are Zuñiga. Maybe the contact tracers have not caught up with the contacts at all. Maybe they have not monitored that some of these persons with infections have close contacts at their very residences. Maybe the hospitals are running out of space (which is a fact) and they decided to send the patient home to potentially spread the virus along the way, and more so, potentially defy protocols. Okay, so maybe collecting beds for patients is not an easy task, but maybe we can prevent the persons in need of care from moving along any further. Maybe such solutions are causing more problems that will definitely need more solutions in the future. Now, that’s what you call an infectious cycle.

Wait, I have one more anecdote. A live-in housekeeper went home for the weekend. On that brief period of visit, she experienced severe bleeding which compelled her to be rushed to the hospital. (okay, last time I checked, bleeding is not a symptom of Covid-19, even if it comes out of your nose.) A short time later, housekeeper who by this time is now lying on a hospital bed, is declared Covid positive, and her husband who brought her there is himself brought to a quarantine facility, a place which the landlady ought to be as well, for the sake of fairness.

Okay, join me in a quick timeline here. Housekeeper does her final chores at her workplace before going home for a visit, during which she has not shown any symptoms for weeks. She comes home during which she still does not show any symptoms. She experiences severe bleeding which is not a Covid symptom. She is brought to and confined at a hospital, during which she still does not show any symptom. Then a short time later, she gets positive. Tell me, at which point did she get the virus?

Now, we are breaking through a milestone with Enhanced Community Quarantine only on weekends, in the presumption that people will not move about as much on weekdays, and the people who used to move about on weekends definitely would not and could not re-schedule their movements on weekdays; and more seriously, not to suspend economic activities on a large scale. Some barangays with presumably high number of cases will be on granular lockdown which confuses me if the lockdown would be only on weekends or on a 2 week period. If the intent is to initiate a decrease of cases by suspending movements for two days in a week, then the kids run around again for the rest of the week, is the movement suspended at all? Anyway, let’s see and hope and pray this works.

“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.”

1 Corinthians 15:58