Pangan: They, too, are tired and weary

LUMPED together as modern-day heroes with our overseas Filipino workers are this year's pandemic frontliners: doctors, nurses, medical aides and other health workers along with security guards, food delivery men and even bank employees.

These frontliners definitely risk their health and lives in the name of genuine public service and get less pecuniary rewards. They are overworked, to say the least, but are underpaid. The authorities seem to delay their benefits much to their chagrin and disbelief!

So it is perfectly understandable that they requested a "timeout" from their work. In line with this, they urged President Duterte to place the National Capital Region, the source of too many active Covid-19 cases under a stricter modified enhanced community quarantine, from a previous general community quarantine or GCQ.

Columnist Diwa C. Guinigundo wrote thus: July ended with our medical practitioners calling for the National Capital Region to be quarantined again for at least two weeks.

Public hospitals Ospital ng Maynila and Dr. Fabella Memorial Hospital were overwhelmed with too many patients, as are other hospitals, public and private, that patients, other than Covid-19-infected, are not admitted due to severe lack of rooms.

Guinigundo added that frontliners reported that many of them reportedly were getting sick while struggling against fear and anxiety. Burnout is rampant, with many resigning and discouraged, given the seemingly endless number of patients getting admitted to the hospitals.

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There is a limit to the resilience and patience of frontliners. They are also humans and not machines. But even machines break down and become unserviceable.

So now, their letter request for a timeout is very revealing: We are waging a losing battle against Covid-19 and we need to draw up a consolidated definitive plan of action.

The more than 112,000 plus cases of Covid-19 bear witness to the frontliners' plea. Then, what is the government doing to firmly and decisively address the disease's upsurge of infection?

Meanwhile, our economy suffers painfully and we may be in a deep recession.

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Engr. Mac de Guzman, BAM of SM City Pampanga, assisted me in my visit last week. Over lunch, he narrated some family info. He has a son named Euan Marco Gutierrez de Guzman who was also born

September 21, incidentally my birthday. I told him that Euan falls under the Virgo sign and as such he is intellectual albeit temperamental, meticulous but loving. So?

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