When COVID-19 hits close to home

-

COVID-19, the pandemic, has been raging on in different parts of the world. At this time, India is in the spotlight because its healthcare system has been bulldozed by the number of cases in its second wave of COVID-19 cases. For the past weeks, the subcontinent has been recording more than 400,000 cases per day. Hospitals lack beds and oxygen gas tanks. People die in ambulances and in car parks. Medicine students are pulled out of their licensure exams to man the hospitals and support the overworked medical doctors fighting deep in the trenches of this pandemic. Cremation areas and cemeteries are also overwhelmed by the number of pyres and burials.

As horrible as the numbers are, and as heartbreaking as the tragic images portray, COVID-19 remains a news item and a pandemic happening far away from home until people close to us start biting the dust.

I remember reading Nico Quejano's posts on Twitter about an uncle being sick and eventually dying of complications. I remember friends of mine from high school discussing the passing of a schoolmate two years our senior. A friend contracted COVID-19 twice and lives to tell the tale of two infections. 

Never did I expect that soon, after all, this, a cousin's family would face a similar story. My cousin's brother-in-law contracted COVID-19 along with his wife and children. The wife and the children survived but he didn't. When I learned about what happened to them, I realised that the pandemic is real and it's just a matter of time before it affects everyone. Nobody escapes unscathed.

The tragedy of all this is that people are dying while vaccines are being rolled out. We are almost at the end of the tunnel and the light is already visible, yet others won't make it to the other side. 

And so even when we get vaccinated, we need to continue wearing masks, staying six feet away from people outside of our households, and avoiding big gatherings until this pandemic is over. The vaccinated need to protect those who are not yet immunised to the disease... until we reach herd immunity at the earliest.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in Bagu
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma
Read more