Just a few more days left and it'd be exactly 3 years since my last blog post. A bit of a surprise, eh? Nope, I pretty much have all the time in the world at the moment because of the current state of the world. And I feel compelled to write about it as a human being alive during this time. If you've been on my blog before and read my past entries, you might be wondering (or not) what I did for the last 3 years. I would love to talk about that too but for now, let's talk about a very important situation I and the rest of humanity is facing right now.
For a future reader of this blog post, at the start of this year 2020, humans have began battling a pandemic called COVID-19 previously named novel coronovirus since it's a type of corona virus which has never been seen before. As of this writing, it has already killed thousands of people (mostly elderly) around the world and has infected over a million people across the globe in just a matter of months. (source: WHO)
Sounds crazy right? Yeah, I was thinking like that too only 30 days ago. Ours was among the first institutions who declared quarantine protocols because we belong to the academic sector and of course, students who are basically children and the responsibility of the adult society, will always be the first priority. Hence, we got classes and work suspensions ahead of everybody.
We had a head start of one week when Manila City mayor Isko Moreno declared suspension of classes on the afternoon of March 9 and by March 12, 2020, the President placed the whole of NCR in community quarantine until April 14, 2020. After just 4 days, it was declared that we are now on Enhanced Community Quarantine which means no public transportation, no local flights in and out of NCR and most of all, it placed the whole of the region on curfew starting from 8PM to 5AM.
Of course, we're not the first country to do this. China was the country of origin for COVID-19, specifically Wuhan City, and they have already started the battle since the start of the year. The whole city has been placed in total lockdown since then and it hasn't been lifted as of this writing.
At this point, you might be wondering why this virus has affected humanity so much despite the existence of deadlier ones we've faced before. Well for one, humanity denied its existence and had played a major role in creating a movie-like situation for this planet. China downplayed the situation in Wuhan and didn't place advise the world of how fast the virus spreads and how fatal it can be. It was looked down upon by surrounding countries in the South East Asia region, including the Philippines, hence, we didn't prepare for the worst.
Another factor for the unpreparedness of humanity at this point is the similarity of its symptoms to the common flu. Except for difficulty of breathing, the virus made it difficult for experts to differentiate it from other flu viruses thus it was treated lightly and without caution. The virus worked like a mosquito, seen but was disregarded all the same.
And now, millions are suffering because of it. Because humans thought it a petty thing. And somehow, we played ourselves wrong when we thought we are prepared for the worst.
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