A plan – doable!
Published Aug 7, 2020 11:00 pm
MEDIUM RARE
Jullie Y. Daza
For the moment, for sure the best action plan the government need not have a hand in crafting – with no cost whatsoever as the advice is free, minus consultation fee – is Dr. Tony Leachon’s instruction to one and all: Behave as if we’re under ECQ. No threats of arrest, no door-to-door search for patients, no passes to line up for, just use your common sense and be safe for yourself and others.
Recall how our quarantine-fatigued doctors appealed to the President for a “time out” in the form of an ECQ, the strictest lockdown category? Recall how the President met them half-way by imposing a slightly less restrictive MECQ to strike a cautious balance between keeping people safe and keeping the economy running?
Dr. Leachon’s suggestion appears to be a readable road map. (Some maps are hard to read, some roads lead nowhere.) If we practice ECQ while under MECQ, it will be a form of blended learning – combining what the medical frontliners prayed for and what the IATF thinks is good for all, given that the virus has grown more virulent and spreads more easily.
What have we to lose? We’ve been through ECQ before, from March 17 to June. Then we migrated to a much relaxed GCQ on June 1, sliding to MECQ on Aug. 4 as COVID cases hit the high notes. Looking back, the ECQ period – extended two or three times – was relatively “safe.” Who’d think that we are now tops in Southeast Asia, our hospitals are running out of beds, and even as more tests are conducted the positives are beating the negatives overwhelmingly?
ECQ was a bane to our freewheeling lifestyles, which was only natural in the beginning. Eventually, a truce was called under GCQ. Then a bad thing happened. People let down their guard. Most of them thought, or wanted to think, that the abnormal new had been a bad dream and they were now reclaiming life in pre-Ides of March.
I’ve said it before and I say it again, for senior citizens who are being kept against their will 24/7 for the duration of the longest lockdown in the world, there’s no difference between one Q and the others. So bring it on!
Jullie Y. Daza
For the moment, for sure the best action plan the government need not have a hand in crafting – with no cost whatsoever as the advice is free, minus consultation fee – is Dr. Tony Leachon’s instruction to one and all: Behave as if we’re under ECQ. No threats of arrest, no door-to-door search for patients, no passes to line up for, just use your common sense and be safe for yourself and others.
Recall how our quarantine-fatigued doctors appealed to the President for a “time out” in the form of an ECQ, the strictest lockdown category? Recall how the President met them half-way by imposing a slightly less restrictive MECQ to strike a cautious balance between keeping people safe and keeping the economy running?
Dr. Leachon’s suggestion appears to be a readable road map. (Some maps are hard to read, some roads lead nowhere.) If we practice ECQ while under MECQ, it will be a form of blended learning – combining what the medical frontliners prayed for and what the IATF thinks is good for all, given that the virus has grown more virulent and spreads more easily.
What have we to lose? We’ve been through ECQ before, from March 17 to June. Then we migrated to a much relaxed GCQ on June 1, sliding to MECQ on Aug. 4 as COVID cases hit the high notes. Looking back, the ECQ period – extended two or three times – was relatively “safe.” Who’d think that we are now tops in Southeast Asia, our hospitals are running out of beds, and even as more tests are conducted the positives are beating the negatives overwhelmingly?
ECQ was a bane to our freewheeling lifestyles, which was only natural in the beginning. Eventually, a truce was called under GCQ. Then a bad thing happened. People let down their guard. Most of them thought, or wanted to think, that the abnormal new had been a bad dream and they were now reclaiming life in pre-Ides of March.
I’ve said it before and I say it again, for senior citizens who are being kept against their will 24/7 for the duration of the longest lockdown in the world, there’s no difference between one Q and the others. So bring it on!