Tag Archives: Covid-19

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GCQ, ECQ, Fake Watches & Faker Covid Stats

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Last Friday, May 1st, Negros Oriental downgraded its quarantine from ECQ to GCQ – well sort of. I described the very strict ECQ requirements in this blog.

Most of the Province welcomed the GCQ. It meant that most people could go back to work; a necessity for Filipinos. Most stores and businesses re-opened, albeit with restrictions. On Monday the 4th, the malls re-opened and that’s when the shit hit the fan.

Robinsons Mall, where we do most of our shopping had never completely closed. Throughout the ECQ the supermarket was open, the pharmacy was open, sometimes the hardware store was open, and a couple fast food places were open for take out. But that was it. Janet and I were in the mall Sunday and could see most of the stores had staff inside cleaning and disinfecting, preparing for the Monday re-opening.

Janet and I were wise enough to know that Monday would be crowded as hell and we didn’t want to deal with that. After all, for many Filipinos it would be the first time they could work in a month or more, and for most residents it would be the first time they could shop other than for essential food and medicine. Apparently Janet and I were wiser than the leadership.

Pictures were posted all day of traffic in Dumaguete and crowded malls and social distancing not being done or enforced. By late Monday many were calling for something to be done and some were even calling for a return to ECQ. This is what panic does to us.

As I say Janet and I skipped Monday and returned to Robinsons Tuesday. Like most people, there were many things we hadn’t done in the previous month and we were anxious to do them. Our experience was nothing like the complaints from Monday. The traffic was normal, the mall was not crowded, the mall parking lot had plenty of spaces, and people calmly socially distanced. To be honest I was happy and really impressed.

But this didn’t matter since the decision had already been made based on that one day. The pass system, which allowed only 1 person per family to go into Dumaguete to shop, was reinstated for non-residents. The pass system for Dumaguete residents (color coded) was also reinstated. The pass is necessary not just to get through traffic checkpoints but to get into malls and markets.

They also unfortunately reinstated the restrictions on seniors 60+. We are supposed to stay home. The only exceptions are that a senior who works can get a pass and a senior who lives alone can get a pass for essential needs.

So for me, after a few days of freedom, I’m back to lockdown mode. Well, not entirely. My attitude has shifted a bit. For over a month I absolutely followed the rules. But at this point I figure since they can’t determine what the rules are, I can bend them just a bit. Last night Janet and I drove into Valencia town to hit my fave taco cart; take out of course. I threw on my cap, thinking if I covered my mostly bald and grey head I’d look younger lol. I saw several other old farts, so I didn’t feel very conspicuous. Never have I been so happy to watch someone make me a fajita. I thanked them profusely and gave a bigger than normal tip. We got home and I inhaled the fajitas. Sometimes it’s the little things.

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Most people who know me know that I am a watch guy. In retirement that means inexpensive (aka cheap) watches. I have a G-Shock or two and saw a new model that I liked. March 1st I went online where many Lazada vendors were selling the model I wanted. The prices were all over the map. No surprise since most G-Shocks in the Philippines are fake. I messaged a couple vendors who messaged back, “Authentic Sir.” Yeah right. In the end it’s a G-Shock and plastic and who cares so I ordered one. March 9th it hit Manila and went through customs, where it’s been ever since. This morning I got a message from NinjaVans, my fave delivery service. It’s on its way a mere two months late. Just like the Fajita, never have I been so happy to get a cheap fake watch!

Of course it came from China, so I sanitised the shit out of it first before putting it on! Happy locked up guy!

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Now, let’s segway to the serious stuff. I was a math guy when I was young. I was not only good at doing the math I was pretty good at understanding the concepts. Never has math and statistics been as important as in this pandemic and the experts, who may be expert doctors, or experts at getting elected aren’t very good with math.

Let’s face it; nearly all of us panicked at first because the statistics were showing that 3-6% of Covid-19 positive patients were dying. That was based on the number of deaths divided by the early positive test numbers, based on little testing. And it’s true that 3+% death is scary.

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Today initial antibody testing shows that in all likelihood millions of Americans (and everywhere else) have had Covid-19. In NY State the antibody testing indicated 21% of the residents have had it, whether they knew it or not. Depending on your outlook that can be good or bad news. Bad because it indicates what was only speculated; that Covid-19 is very infectious. Good because if you divide the deaths by the actual number of people who have had the disease we now can be confident that the percentage or mortality rate is much lower than previously thought; perhaps as low as .1%. That certainly does not help those who have died, but it does help those of us worried to know that if we get the disease our chance of dying is not 3-6% but closer to 1/1000. You have to wonder if we knew from the start this reality, would our decision to lockdown the world have been the same?

The other piece of statistical information that no one seems to be talking about is this. We have been told from the get go that seniors and those with other medical issues are far more likely to die than younger or middle aged people. This certainly makes perfect sense. Who is likely to do better: a healthy 30 year old or a falling apart 80 year old?

But that’s not the full story. Today I heard international statistics on the percentage of total Covid deaths in nursing homes. IOW deaths in nursing homes divided by the total death count.

Canada – 62%; Australia – 25%; Denmark – 33%; France – 51%; Germany – 36%; Ireland – 60%; Israel – 32%; Portugal – 40%; Sweden – 45%; and the USA – 58%.

Yes, you read that right; 58% of the total Covid-19 deaths in the US have occurred in nursing homes and assisted living facilities! Try to get your head around the 58% statistic. And what is the conclusion of the experts? Seniors do badly with Covid-19 and we should protect them.

That’s not how I interpret the statistics. My interpretation? Seniors thrown into cramped shitholes don’t do well.

Unfortunately, such an admission breaks the self-delusional narrative of most Western countries: that we maintain our elderly in clean, medically well-maintained and staffed facilities, comparable to 5-star hotels, where our beloved parents and grandparents can interact with other like-minded oldsters.

How do I know the above narrative is bullshit? Because no senior anywhere, anytime ever wanted to go into a nursing home.

As I was approaching retirement, my mind turned to images of what retirement (if I could afford to retire) might be like. Never once did I think, ‘oooh, when I hit 70 I’ll go into one of those nursing homes, where I can play shuffleboard and chase the nurses.’ Like most seniors I thought, ‘I’d rather be dead than shoved into one of those shitholes.’

As I prepared to retire in the Philippines, Janet and I discussed my aging often. It was always, ‘the family will take care of you and if we need help we can hire a live-in nurse.’ And that’s what we’ll do.

So, the Covid-19 pandemic has at times shown off the best of humanity and at times the worst. And how we in the West treat our seniors has been exposed as the worst.

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Corona Times #3 – Our Timeline

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We’re in complete lockdown, quarantine, enhanced quarantine, double secret quarantine – whatever the hell you want to call it. A lot of weird and crazy behaviour going on – plenty of it from me.

Yet in a strange way there’s a sense that normalcy is returning. Why do I say that? Because on the social media fear is being replaced – with finger pointing. Seriously, in a warped way it’s a good thing. Governments are being blamed, officials should have known, health organisations are responsible for our plight. And then there are the Chinese; OK in this case they are to blame. Come on guys – I can’t make every analogy work.

But Janet and I have a particular reason to remember the timeline for the beginnings of all this. We had booked a trip to Vietnam, flying out of Manila January 20th and returning the 28th.

It seems a lifetime ago, not 2 1/2 months. Were we worried about a Chinese virus on January 20th? Nope. There had been some rumours but nothing big. But we were worried about our trip. Why? Because Mt. Taal had erupted a week or so before our flight, NAIA had actually closed for a day or so. Janet and I were worried that it would impact out flight and I checked the airport status daily. We were also aware that it might impact our return flight on the 28th. But a virus – no way.

We arrived the evening of the 20th. By the 21st there were lots of masks being worn in Ho Chi Minh City and people were clearly buying masks in stores. Other than that normal life seemed to be going on. Yet as the days went by the topic became more and more important to the Vietnamese people and Janet became more concerned, finally buying a pack of masks.

The 23rd was the first time I really paid any attention. It was the day after my birthday and we’d booked massages in a very high end spa. When we arrived we were required to fill out a form saying that we had not been in the Wuhan area of China over the past 14 days. ‘Well, they’re getting serious about this thing,’ I thought. Probably paranoid, but a little paranoia might not be so bad.

It was the week of Chinese New Year, which is also celebrated in Vietnam. There were the normal celebrations, but I couldn’t help but notice something was wrong. Maybe it was the fact that by then nearly everyone was talking through a mask.

By the time we returned on the 28th, a week later, the world had changed and nearly everyone on the flight was wearing masks. OK, I wasn’t but all the sane people were. We got off the plane and they checked everyone’s temperature, which I thought was really strange, though I was impressed that the Philippines seemed on top of it.

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Still we went back home to normal life. Our routine was the same. I worked on guitars, played golf with my buddies, etc. Occasionally conversations would turn to the topic of “the virus” but no one knew what was coming.

Three days later a certain politician closed off travel from China and everyone called him a nut.

I have no grand conclusions here, except who the hell could have really known. For those who say they did know or everyone should have known, I have a great memory of the week that began to change the world and I sure as hell didn’t know.

A couple days ago I played the movie Cloverfield, a clever horror movie. For those not familiar, it starts out as a story of some 20-something friends at a party celebrating one friend moving to Tokyo for work. We get to see these young people get drunk, hit on each other, and do silly things we all did at that age. A half hour into the movie there’s a huge crash, a building comes down and we find out in real time that a Godzilla-like monster is destroying the city. It’s a clever take on a routine monster story.

I think I played it for myself and Janet because it reflects our current life. We go along enjoying life, in my case a retired life. We go on a vacation and have fun. We return home our vacation a success. And then suddenly a monster begins to destroy the world.

There’s no time to figure out where the monster came from or who should have known or whether we should have been better prepared for an alien attack. We just have to run like hell, or in our current situation, sit like hell.

Come to think about it the Cloverfield analogy is a crappy one. At the end of the story, the military, nearly defeated, drops a nuke on it killing our young heroes. So as I say the analogy doesn’t quite work; or maybe it does. In our case the nuke is to stay home, stay safe and take care of each other.

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Corona TImes #2

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It’s been only 12 days since I wrote my last blog piece, http://Corona Times in the Philippines, and well, the world and the Philippines have changed a lot since then. I usually try to write humorously but it’s a tough struggle now.

Like many people, I just want the world to return to the way it was a month or two ago. If not, I want someone to give me a date when to expect things to return. And if not that I want the world to return for just me and Janet – and maybe if I’m generous a few carefully selected others – and let the rest of you deal with all of this. That seems fair, don’t you all agree lol.

By the Numbers: As of today there are 2084 reported cases of Covid-19 in the Philippines and 88 deaths. This is 10 times the number of cases and about 6 times the number of deaths I reported 12 days ago. The numbers are small compared to the US, but growing at an alarming rate.

Unlike most countries, the Philippines, an archipelago, has a natural advantage. Ferries and planes between islands were mostly shutdown 2 weeks ago, with the exception of necessary supplies. Whatever term you use, that means that we’ve essentially been quarantined for the past couple weeks, unable to travel except on our island. Actually that’s not entirely true. Negros has two provinces and the other province, Negros Occidental closed its borders a couple weeks ago. so really we can only travel within Negros Oriental, which is pretty limiting.

I watch a huge country like the US, where people can and do freely travel between states, and can’t help but wonder if that’s a good thing. Here we have no such options.

In addition, islands like Luzon and Cebu are under complete lockdown, so you can’t move from town to town. Several of Janet’s siblings left Cebu City before the lockdown and are now home in Alcoy, Cebu.

Gradually through the last 12 days most stores and restaurants have closed. A few holdovers do deliveries. I was disappointed to find out that my favourite bagel place, Rolling Pin, actually the only bagel place, closed today. I was hoping to hit it one more time before Friday.

Why Friday? Because Friday, April 3rd the entire province announced we’d be under enhanced quarantine. This means most businesses will be closed by law. Every family will get one pass for someone to leave the home 2 days a week to get groceries or take care of whatever business they have. Janet will be the pass holder, since as a senior I am not supposed to leave the house at all. I’m not a have to go places every day sort of guy but I need my daily walk. At this age my daily walk is mostly the walk around the block sort of exercise and I’m still hoping to be able to do that. I swear I’ll wear a mask and won’t go near anybody but being locked in scares the shit out of me.

Now I have to admit that where we are locked in is a pretty nice place. We have 1300+ square meters of property. I have a shop in the back of the lot and Janet has a garden. Hell, I could walk to my shop and back 4 or 5 times and it would be just as much exercise as my walk, but it’s still not the same.

As reported before the yard is big enough to practice my chipping. I have a bucket as my target. I usually miss it and the ball goes into Janet’s garden which doesn’t enhance our relationship.

Unlike most Filipinos we have plenty of groceries and the money to get more. And we have a car which allows us to stay away from others. I never thought of this benefit when I bought the car but it seems pretty important now.

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In fact yesterday, as my darling Janet began to watch me crack up she suggested that we take a drive. We drove to Siaton; just drove and looked at the sites. The weather was beautiful of course. Dumaguete was pretty much closed down but as we got further and further out of town we noticed that commercial activity picked up, until it seemed normal by the time we hit the outer limits of our drive. I wish I could say this was a good thing but in fact it struck us as a bad thing. I could imagine the people thinking, ‘All that danger stuff is for people in Dumaguete or Cebu or Manila, not for us here.’ I hope they’re right but doubt it.

But come Friday there will be no more drives, no more bagels or most other treats I like to spoil myself and Janet with.

But it’s not all bad news. Because the bagel place was closed, I panicked. “I wonder if McDonalds (known as McDos here) is closed?” I cried in terror. “Let’s find out,” suggested my darling wife. We went down there and praise the Lord, they were open and we got our normal meals from the drivethru. Now the routine is different; money goes in a basket; food is handed to you on a tray. I had my mask on so they didn’t get my order right, but hell, they usually get it wrong anyway. Regardless, we were happy and they told us the drivethru would remain open past the dreaded April 3rd.

One more bit of normalcy. Exiting the drivethru and making a left as I do to get home is always a challenge. A motorcyclist was bound and determined to “get butchered” as Janet loves to delicately say, swerved around me to avoid being hit; and he avoided it barely. It was as if to say, “I’m not letting some damn virus keep me from my destiny – to die on my motor.” Anyway, I didn’t kill him and we returned home and wolfed down our burgers so quickly I couldn’t much enjoy it but was happy for the normalcy.

One other bit of normal. A couple days ago Shopee actually delivered a package. I kid you not! I was surprised since I’d gotten a message the day before from the driver that said he couldn’t deliver because of the quarantine. So I was shocked to see him ring the bell and ask for 171 Pesos for a tiny, sort of irrelevant item that I’d ordered a month (or a lifetime) ago. But I was happy. Now if they’d only deliver Janet’s birthday present which is stuck somewhere between Manila and Dumaguete or the little toy which I bought for myself and hadn’t told Janet about (until now) and is coming via FedEx. Every day their automated system tells me it’s coming today but everyday I get a message saying it’s still stuck in Manila. These mofos are teasing me. I wish they’d just admit, “Hey we’re enjoying your toy. You crazy Americans really spend money on this shit?”

One more piece of Philippines normalcy: As I’m writing this Janet calls me, “There’s a lizard in our bathroom.” “So what,” I say. “We see them all the time.” “This is the biggest one we’ve ever had.” I went up and sure enough he was the biggest one we’ve ever had in the house. We tried to catch him and he ran behind the bathtub. Clearly he’s a male lizard – he likes my tub. He can’t be all bad.

Ok I’m making light of all this crap. I could tell you that I’m scared for myself and I could tell you I’m scared for Janet and my Filipino family and neighbours who have it much worse than me. Or I could tell you I’m afraid for my kids, who I can’t get to see if the worst happened and visa versa.

But I can’t tell you all these things. Too busy chasing that lizard.