THE SITUATION. The Inter-Agency Task Force for Managing Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-MEID) created and applied four kinds of community quarantine for the pandemic. They are, in the order of severity: enhanced (ECQ), modified enhanced (MECQ), general (GCQ) and modified general (MGCQ). Enhanced and general, with a modified version of each.
We've been shifting from one category to another. Cebu particularly has gone through so many changes, in two-week periods of ordeal, that many Cebuanos tend to lose track of time and rules for each CQ category.
The national task force -- along with such agencies as Neda, Department of Trade and Industry, and Department of Labor and Employment -- had also been preparing on a fifth phase, which is no longer a quarantine. The working name: New Normal.
Last May 26, this was asked, "Are we half-ready for the New Normal?" It was after most of the country had gone through ECQ, MECQ and GCQ. Stay-at-home, shelter-in-place, CQ-weary citizens were raring to go out, reopen business and resume social relations.
Two months later, now going into the third month, policy-makers and public officials hardly mention the NN word anymore.
REMOVED LAST JUNE. The government, through the IATF, announced on June 23 that it has removed New Normal from its list. There used to be five categories; now there are only four.
At the time, the country was under relaxed lockdown, struggling with the hard choice of curbing the spread of coronavirus or reopening trade and industry, the balancing act of saving of lives and saving jobs. Until now, the nation is still locked on the horns of the same dilemma.
IATF said the removal was temporary. IATF was "re-calibrating parameters," which effectively silenced those seeking clarification. President Rodrigo Duterte's spokesman said then, "Sa ngayon po wala munang New Normal. Ibig sabihin, lahat ng lugar ng Pilippinas ay mayroon pa rin pong community quarantine."
People were comforted by the qualifier "wala muna (not for now)." But the category could've been suspended, not removed. NN was, and is, something they hope for as they go through CQ after CQ. Maybe IATF didn't want to dangle false hope or raise expectation. And with the plague still rampaging in most parts of the world, IATF proved to be not overly cautious.
CHANGING DEFINITION OF NN. (1) IATF at first described the general quarantine or GCQ as the New Normal. (2) Later, the national task force said an area can be deemed under NN only when it shifts to modified quarantine, or MGCQ. (3) Still later, it decided that NN will be a category after MGCQ, that is, when quarantines are over. (4) Last June 23, in Resolution #48, IATF announced the removal of NN as a category, limiting the phases to only four levels.
The latest decision seemed logical: NN, which is not a quarantine, did not have to be lumped with quarantines. Skeptics, however, may see it as abandonment of hope of getting back to the status before Covid-19.
Realists watching the state of the war against the plague say the task force is keeping pace with the "evolving knowledge" about the pandemic. It is not what scientists and health experts thought it was. The changes in definition reflect the changes in information about the virus and the harm it causes.
RETURNING TO THE WAY WE WERE. Two major sobering developments: (1) growing awareness that people may have to learn to live with the Covid-19 if it cannot be crushed, and (2) increasing acceptance of changes in practices and modes of social behavior, study, work, and leisure.
Even without quarantine, most of people's activities would never be the same again. Without vaccine or drug that will stamp out or tame the coronavirus, people can only dream of, not return to, the way they were.
US President Donald Trump, who seems to live in his own realm of reality, is among Covid-19 non-believers who think the Americans are doing great even in the face of 159,000 deaths and 4.86 million infections (as of August 5). Trump said Covid will just disappear, not conceding that it will stay around and strike back anytime.
MAJOR DIFFERENCE between the season of quarantines and New Normal times will be the removal of lockdowns, quarantines, patrol inspections and border checkpoints.
What instructs us here and elsewhere in the world is that the length and harshness of restrictions during the pandemic depend largely on the wisdom of leadership or lack of it.
And the smart leaders didn't all come from autocratic governments, where police and soldiers with their guns were helpless in battling the virus, or from democracies, where idiocy prevailed over the counsel of facts and science.