In the middle

By Netnet Camomot

EMMA Stone had a guest role in “Malcolm in the Middle,” the TV series that ran from 2000 to 2006, leaving the youngest generation with absolutely no idea on who Malcolm was and why he was in the middle.

Since I don’t watch TV anymore and the last movie I watched was the live-action “Mulan,” connecting the youngest generation with the current movies and TV shows of “Malcolm’s” cast is a challenge, but I gotta feeling they know who Emma Stone is. She could be the common denominator between them and their parents and grandparents.

It’s much like the current world population having a common denominator with those who were around in 1918, no thanks to the pandemic. It was the flu in 1918. Now, there’s Covid-19 which the World Health Organization declared as a pandemic on March 11, 2020.

Since there’s a contest on who can reach more planets outside the Earth, and another contest on who can make the deadliest weapons of mass destruction, the truly essential has been forgotten: eradicating poverty and hunger, eliminating diseases, preventing climate change, epidemics, and pandemics.

The Cagayanon is not even learning anything from the Covid-19 pandemic as he throws caution to the wind and continues his old-normal hobbies of partying and drinking.

No, not cushion. Caution.

Feel free, though, to throw a cushion filled with anvil at the Cagayanon as he parties and drinks the day away—he’s too drunk to notice, anyway.

And then, there’s the other Cagayanon, the one posting on Facebook his search for home-service RT-PCR, oximeters, medical oxygen tanks, portable oxygen cylinders, high flow nasal cannulas, Remdesivir, and hospitals that still have available Covid-dedicated beds. But would that stop the partying and drinking Cagayanon from, well, partying and drinking? Nah. Again, he’s too drunk to notice. Tugs! Tugs!

How insensitive the Cagayanon is proving to be as he parties and drinks with friends. And once his loved ones have Covid, he would say that Covid is fake, that the hospital declared his loved one’s condition as Covid so it could charge the hospital bill to PhilHealth. “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt,” as the saying goes.

And now that Cagayan de Oro is under the much stricter Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ), the Cagayanon partygoer and drinker will still find ways to party and drink with friends. That’s his nature. “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” as another saying goes.

Let’s quote all the sayings to help us get the message across. Here’s one more: “Mapugngan pa ang baha, ang gugma dili.” The gugma for partying and drinking, that is.

Talk of floods, Typhoon Dante was coming soon to Northern Mindanao on Monday as CDO anxiously waited for the Inter-Agency Task Force’s new quarantine levels for June. CDO’s lockdowners wanted an ECQ, of course, as the city’s business owners wondered if banks would again give them a moratorium on loan payments if indeed it would be an ECQ or MECQ.

Despite CDO’s Covid-19 surge, business owners still preferred the General CQ (GCQ), one step stricter than the Modified GCQ (MCGQ) that the city had been enjoying for a year already. Obviously enjoyed to infinity and beyond, thus the surge. Tsk tsk.

The GCQ allows the economy to reopen but with more rules to ensure there’s social distancing.

For the Cagayanon who has stayed home, worked from home, and switched to online shopping—from cooked food to groceries and appliances—since the quarantine began in March 2020, nothing much would change whatever the quarantine status would be.

He orders everything online. He has discovered other caterers aside from the usual caterers and restos he used to order from before the pandemic. And he has learned to party with his immediate household.

Surely he has friends who made mahay when he said no to their invites to gatherings. But CDO’s current Covid-19 surge should serve as a lesson to those friends on how contagious and deadly the virus could be.

The immediate household is composed of the people you live with.

If you live in a boarding house or apartment with other people, then they’re your immediate household.

If your immediate family members live in other addresses all over the city, province, region, country, world, galaxy, universe, then they can’t be classified as your immediate household.

The misinterpretation of immediate household is as dangerous as the misinterpretation of quarantine levels and the minimum public health standards. This can be seen in Facebook posts of birthday parties and other occasions where parents and siblings and their spouses and kids are celebrating together. That’s the immediate family. But if they don’t live together under one roof, then they’re not the immediate household.

Doctors say that it’s safe to have meals together with the immediate family, thinking that translates to immediate household but sometimes it doesn’t.

And if the immediate household has an authorized person outside of residence who goes out daily for work, then everyone in that household should wear face masks and practice physical distancing even at home. Welcome to the new normal.

This is how it’s going to be for Pinas until it reaches herd immunity. Oh, well.