We’re teetering on the edge of another lifestyle change as Metro Manila enters modified enhanced community quarantine. If you’re feeling a little (or a lot) anxious, we understand. We are too.
Zoom meetings and Netflix have defined my life for two months. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve felt low at times: hopeless and a little out of breath, wondering what could have been had we not had to live beneath the umbra of a pandemic.
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Yesterday, I read an article on The New York Times entitled “How Pandemics End” by Gina Kolata. It was interesting in the way it explained exactly what the title suggested.
According to the article, the first way a pandemic ends is medically: it happens when a vaccine or cure is found. The second way, socially, is when people simply grow tired of the restrictions and learn to live with the disease at bay. In what Times magazine terms as “caution fatigue”, people have become lax about social distancing, yearning for a return to normalcy, when life had allowed us into crowded sporting events, parties, concerts, and all that good stuff.
In many cases, it seems as if the coronavirus pandemic is ending socially way before it will end medically. The mayor of Las Vegas has been itching to reopen casinos, and bars at Lan Kwai Fong (in Hong Kong) have also begun operating again after weeks of shutdown. France has allowed joggers to take to the beaches, while in Britain, Boris Johnson, has announced a rather baffling reopening plan. Manila, without aggressive mass testing, is set to transition to “modified enhanced community quarantine” (MECQ) on the 16th of May, partially opening up a few key sectors. All of this is overwhelming — especially for someone like me, who has been glued to a routine in the confines of her home for a little over two months. I’ve always hated routine and the monotony it brings about, but in lockdown, it has (ironically) become the saviour of my sanity.