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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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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New quarantine hobby: Listening to the death zaps of those blasted mosquitoes. I know my stats are accurate. Each color represents a different day.

There I was in front of my building, waiting for the Lalamove rider to pick up a package, soaking up some vitamin D while checking my messages. Five minutes later the rider arrived and I realized to my horror that while I had gloves on, I wasn’t wearing a mask! Of course the rider was wearing mask, helmet, and gloves. I passed him the package and slunk back to my apartment in shame. Had I contaminated anyone? Was it safe in that empty street? Had I inhaled aerosol particles carrying the virus? Would I catch the disease? And I had been so careful, I barely left the house in eight weeks. What if it gets so bad I’d have to be hospitalized? What if there are no ventilators left? What if, what if?
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“Don’t panic” is not the same as “Don’t think about COVID-19.” There’s a good chance that we will all get it. What happens then?

From what I understand, it’s like a bad flu and cold. If you’re healthy, it will pass. If you’re not healthy, it could develop into pneumonia or something worse.

If you have it, you have to quarantine yourself. Stay at home, limit contact with people. Wear a mask if you have to go near anyone. Two weeks’ isolation. If your case is severe (you can’t breathe), go to the hospital. Remember that you are highly contagious. Remember that in a pandemic, hospitals will be full.
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Photo of Aedes aegypti mosquito from CNN. Just looking at it makes my skin itch.

Now that my eldest niece is 11, we can have actual conversations. Our common interests are tennis, notebooks, and Greek mythology. Last week she had a persistent fever that turned out to be dengue. Aargh, will we never be rid of this pestilence. (She’s okay. The taua taua tea was a big help.)

I’m fortunate never to have gotten dengue even if mosquitoes adore me. If there is one mosquito in a large room full of people, it will choose me to snack on. During nighttime garden parties, a halo of mosquitoes forms over my head. And then I discovered that they prefer my friend Juan’s blood to mine, so if he’s within five meters I am safe.

I don’t use insecticide at home because strong smells give me congestion, and my nose does not distinguish between stink and floral perfume. (The first thing I do when I get into an Uber or Grab car is to ask the driver to put the air freshener away, those things are lethal. I also avoid shampoos whose fragrance is masangsang, and ask the laundry to hold off on the fabric conditioner.) Also, the feline overlords don’t like it. I’ve tried different kinds of natural/organic insect repellent and candles, most of them citronella-based—sometimes they work, more often they don’t.

Friends recommend those UV mosquito zappers that fry the flying pestilence carriers. Dorski tells me there’s a dengue vaccine now. Lali, who’s had the more excruciating mosquito-borne infection called chikungunya, says there are four varieties of dengue so even if you’ve had dengue you could still catch the three other kinds. Load up on taua taua tea. Be careful out there.

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Another anti-dengue measure: Boysen plans to sell a mosquito-killing paint that doesn’t harm humans. (Note: The people who run Boysen are my friends, and they have supported my projects over the years.) This video from their partner explains how it works:

Unfortunately the Food and Drug Administration has turned down their application.

Migraine illustration by Dave Cutler

I spent all of Sunday in bed with a migraine, and on Monday my head still felt like an egg in danger of cracking, but I managed to go to the bank then to lunch, to buy the week’s supply of cat food, and to record my Trippies voice-overs despite bizarre misunderstandings with two Uber drivers, neither of them could find Glorietta 1—the mall where the airconditioning is as feeble as the dying exhalations of a consumptive mouse—and one of whom attempted to drive to Legaspi Village by way of Alabang. Some of the confusion was due to curious instructions from Waze, which would not have been an issue if the drivers were familiar with the Makati business district, and which were probably due to the faint, faint, disappearing internet connection on their phones. When I got home I tried to take a nap to preempt another headache, but I felt like my apartment was closing in on me like the garbage chute in Star Wars: A New Hope. I was suffocating in stuff. I needed space, air, blankness.
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