Pangan: Hail to the frontliners

THERE are different ways to applaud our frontliners, the brave men and women who risks their lives in taking care of patients stricken with the Covid-19 disease.

One, as ABS-CBN is already doing to get people to endorse the good deeds of doctors, nurses, lab technicians and others. Still, the television is only one medium to send across messages of thanks and the print media can magnify their presence in our midst.

There are many more people to thank like the garbage collectors, the armed forces, PNP and other members of the military, the bank employees and their counterparts in the remittance business and the lowly security guards and barangay tanods and officials.

These individuals like the doctors and nurses and other medical practitioners spend their waking time in the pursuit of helping us do our regular routines. They are like the medical professionals equally doing an important job daily.

The enhanced community quarantine or ECQ has been extended up to May 15, 2020 and there may be prospects for another extension beyond May 15 who knows? Whatever, people have been acclimatized to this new normal and although many, if not all, are complaining about the extension, there are people who seem to endorse it saying the imposition improved our behavior and collective character not unlike the way we behaved under martial rule.

Manila has suffered several hits by Covid-19, prompting its officials to impose total lockdown especially in Sampaloc and lately, Tondo which is congested.

Residents of this prime city are expectedly complaining saying they have no visible income and are at the mercy of some officials in the matter of distribution of relief goods, if ever these come.

Most of us have longed for a relief from lockdowns, hoping these should be lifted and enable us to roam free. But the health authorities have other plans for the populace, in coordination with other government agencies which are members of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Infectious Diseases. Surely, they have sensible plans arrived at after careful study and deliberations.

So, should be more extensions of the ECQ, the people should expect more restrictions on their mobility. After all, the so-called peak of the disease has not been reached and the plateau is still far and the flat curve of the disease has yet to be reached. What is the new normal then? It is the restricted movement and time limits of our activities. Till the disease register a flattening of its movement, we can expect more limitations on our mobility. Say, when will this malady end? We cannot do anything but pray and pray harder.