Health – PATHLESS TRAVELS

2020-05-022020-05-02

Pandemic Journals, week 9

Note: These are my Covid-19 Pandemic Journals, started on 1 March 2020 (offline) and my daily entries summarized every Sunday. They contain my personal observations, opinions and musings, which would otherwise remain buried in the sheer avalanche of news and analysis in these past three months of 2020. These have been trimmed down in some places and expounded in other places so I can post them here for public consumption. These are my entries for 26 April – 2 May, Week 9.

2020-04-232020-05-02

‘No classes until December’ shows black-and-white thinking

Since the Covid-19 pandemic and a nearly nationwide extended lockdown hit the Philippines, I’ve been repeatedly noticing a deep malaise of black-and-white, dogmatically rigid thinking, not just among the country’s elite ruling class but also among its middle classes and working masses–including quite a few among the enlightened progressives. More about this black-and-white thinking later, but for now, let me just focus on the “no classes until December” proposal or variants thereof–as if keeping the youth away from schools would automatically reduce the risks of getting infected with the Covid-19 virus.

2020-04-162020-04-30

Mass transport is still possible during the Covid-19 crisis

One of the worst kinds of ossified thinking in the present Lockdown Mindset, from which the Philippine government apparently cannot escape, is that the so-called Enhanced Community Quarantine cannot allow for mass transport vehicles to operate regularly because that would violate “social distancing” and defeat the very purpose of ECQ. To my surprise, even some progressives agree with this mindset. They apparently forgot that just before the NCR-wide lockdown on March 15 (which quickly turned into a Luzon-wide lockdown a day later), mass transport services were already starting to try and implement innovative ways to retool themselves to prevent rampant virus transmission inside public vehicles.