Minimum maximized

BY JULLIE Y. DAZA

Vax to the max!

While waiting for that to happen, how about Mask-Hugas-Iwas-Mas pa more?

COVID-19 cases are rising to catch up with inflation, hospital admissions going up, fear of variants rising – the least we can do is to maximize the bare minimum of health protocols to stay

safe. If community trans­missions are spreading, more aggressive self-disci­pline is the shield.

Once upon a time dur­ing a revolutionary govern­ment, disiplina was a bad word for echoing memories of Martial Law, “Sa ikauun­lad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan.”

As we’re now in the thick of another revolution, with­out individual and collective discipline we might as well give up. Minimum doesn’t cut it.

With massive, nationwide vaccinations not immedi­ately doable as yet – what a paradox, that as soon as huge cargoes of vaccines arrived, the number of new cases chose to multiply, in the case of Pasay by nearly 400 percent – the rule should be for everyone to look out for themselves more ac­tively, aggressively, for by so doing it’s for others, for all. Mask-Iwas-Hugas-Mas pa more.

The spike could be a result of “COVID fatigue,” people letting down their guard just because the lockdown “has produced more, not fewer, sick people.” We’re tired of being psychologically exhausted. But we cannot surrender, we must suit up. Surviving on minimum safety is no longer enough. Don’t wait for IATF to make the rules for your life, be your own IATF: I Am The Force.

Fr. Rey, parish priest of San Rafael Arkanghel in Pasay City, choked up when he tried to thank Bishop Broderick Pabillo for daring to say mass in their church last Sunday in spite of the almost-overnight surge in their city, “from 30 infected barangays to 55 and then 77” in the spaceof two weeks. That was as far as the priest could go, his tears getting in the way of his expression of gratitude to the bishop as he was overcome by emo­tion – anxiety, frustration, helplessness?

Prayers help, let us pray for Brazil, which reported 75,000 deaths in one day last Friday. Over here, it’s a shot in the arm to know that last Sunday’s tally of recoveries in the Philippines stood at a whopping 10,516.