JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Tahani Baakdhah @thepurplelilac

On Monday, June 1, many of the quarantine restrictions will be relaxed. Buses and trains will be allowed to operate at 50 percent capacity. Taxis, tricycles, Grab Cars, but not jeeps will start running again. People above the age of 21 and under the age of 60 can leave the house. Non-essential businesses can reopen. This is happening because the economy has to be restarted and workers have to be able to go to work.

There is still no vaccine for covid, and still no mass testing. The number of covid cases is still rising, though the DOH says this is due to late reporting of data rather than new infections. The only thing that has prevented all of us from getting sick, and the health care system from being overwhelmed, is lockdown, and that is ending. With the easing of lockdown rules, the danger of getting infected by coronavirus is very high. Do not let the last two and a half months of staying indoors go to waste. This is not the time to run out and have a party. Nothing has changed, our cheerful paranoia must continue.
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Noshed on Diary of a Foreigner in Paris by Curzio Malaparte, one of the great bullshitters of the 20th century. Hell of a writer, but you don’t have to believe a word he says. The Italian author was a fascist who was later imprisoned by Mussolini. He says it was because he made fun of the dictator’s ties and/or was really anti-fascist. In fact one of his prison sentences was for embezzling public funds. He also did time for insulting a war hero—whose glowing biography he had written himself. The war hero didn’t like it, so he talked trash about the war hero.
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It turns out that I can live with less: no dining out, no shopping, no hanging out at the mall. A movie a day, three books a week, good writing materials, and cats, to paraphrase Truffaut. And food, of course (I read somewhere that Truffaut did not eat much), and cat supplies. Cleaning products. Skin care. I’m all set to live like a Bronte sister, but without the consumption. (True, if too many of us choose to become low-spending shut-ins for the rest of our lives, that will really hobble the economy, but then capitalism needs an overhaul after this catastrophe.)
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Otsu, whom I hadn’t seen since our supermarket run on the day lockdown was announced, dropped off ice cream, cheese, and hopia. Along with my friend’s Garfield-level lasagna and another friend’s mercy mission delivery of good wine, I am set for the week.

These days Otsu can only read medical journals, and she reports that the single best indicator of covid resistance and recovery is high levels of vitamin D. (Which is not to say that chewing ginger or drinking virgin coconut oil is useless, but there hasn’t been enough research there.)
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Portents
I wrote this in 1991, an apocalyptic time—the first Iraq War, the Baguio earthquake, the eruption of Mt Pinatubo, daily 12-hour power outages. Little did I know. The story won first prize at the Palanca Awards and got me a publishing deal with Anvil, which was then managed by Karina Bolasco. Karina is still my publisher, this time with Ateneo University Press.

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