Community Quarantine: The Beginning

Community Quarantine vs. The People of the Philippines

This COVID-19 issue has made such a large impact on our society. People have gone nuts. We can’t really blame anyone as this type of calamity isn’t what we are used to; annoying as a lot would seem to be. This isn’t our usual typhoon nor earthquake that we know how pull through. We fear this all the more because of uncertainty – because we do not actually know how to stop it and what’s going to happen. Yes we’ve been given advise as to how to keep ourselves from getting infected; but still, we aren’t a hundred percent sure what’s going to happen.

It’s been quite a while since President Duterte declared on a conference, the Community Quarantine to be imposed on the National Capital Region along with its scope and limitations. There are guidelines as to what comprises the Executive Order. It was clear, with his words that it is a Community Quarantine, yet people insist that it’s a “lockdown”. Even media reports this order, changes the term into “lockdown”. There comes the problem, how media imposes such on the minds of the people. Especially people who relies heavily on the news, and unfortunately haven’t watched the actual COVID-19 Conference held on the evening of March 12, 2020. News is supposed to deliver facts; to tell the people of what was actually said. Now changing words makes the information somewhat opinionated. A mere interpretation of one’s own understanding – not the solid facts. And yet many would rather believe this, and I deeply understand them. A lot has been anticipating it to happen. However, this misleading information constitutes more fear which precedes commotion and further panic amongst the people.

I’ve written this, days before the actual implementation of the order, currently March 13, 2020

at 21:09 GMT +8 – knowing that this Community Quarantine is just what the government says it is. Indeed, a lockdown would have been considered but the Administrations knows better. They know that it could worsen the situation knowing how many Filipinos think and how they react. People already hoarded supplies… panic buying in different supermarkets event before the COVID-19 even took place in anticipation of what they want to hear. This is also a matter of what the people want to believe versus what is actually upon us. This reminds me of what General Antonio Luna said in the movie Heneral Luna, “may higit tayong kaaway kaysa mga amerikano <on our case, COVID-19>, ang ating sarili”. The government, together with the Department of Health came up with this Community Quarantine. Splicing the so-called lockdown and devised an order which wouldn’t be too much of a burden for all of us. The crisis is inevitable. No one was prepared for it. The government is just doing its job to help us and keep things in order – for our own fucking good. Funny about society is that people keep ranting that the government (regardless of the regime since the people kept doing the same thing in every generation), saying that it isn’t doing anything. Now that it visibly does, they hate it.

Now that were actually experiencing this quarantine, people are then saying (and a lot has already been saying it even days before), that how could this be a lockdown? Because people could still come and go from Metro Manila – delivery of goods and travelling workers. Simple, because it is not a fucking lockdown! Who said it is? The media? Society? The President already declared to the public himself, yet people still believes what they want to believe, despite the facts already laid before them.

This mentality of society has never changed even from the old days between 380 or 360 BC (or maybe later and could’ve been even in the beginning of time). If people would know about Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”, it explains everything.

People will believe, what they want to believe.

-Gerard “Sannin” Salimpade