20/20 vision
By: Patricia Rivera
Tags: 2020, Covid 19, Philippines, Coronavirus

Weeks ago, while I was clearing my bookshelves of trinkets I amassed after simply chucking things here and there, my eyes spotted my stack of journals, neatly placed on one quiet corner. I tried ignoring the pile because my cleaning would turn into a trip down memory lane if I opened even one notebook.

But I couldn’t resist. Minutes later, I found myself flipping the cover of my light blue journal. It didn’t take long for the nostalgia to kick in. The first page already had me yearning for a time that feels so long ago now. On top, it read, “I’m so excited for 2020,” sprawled in lazy handwriting. In the journal entry, I wrote about my plans for the year, like finally witnessing the view at the peak of Mt. Pulag, going on a summer trip with my friends, and getting my first tattoo — things that I know for a fact won’t happen any time soon.

2020 looked like a promising number for me. There was something about the number 20 repeating itself that made it sound so special. I even read a quote somewhere that said 2020 is the year we’re going to see things with unprecedented clarity. They called it the “20/20 vision.” Needless to say, it was a brilliant pun.

I also turned 20 last December, so I thought there was some sentimentality behind my age being nearly the same number as the new year. I took it as the universe’s way of telling me that this year is going to be mine.

But unlike seven months ago when wonder for the year ahead consumed me, hopelessness has become second nature to me now. In the world’s current dismal state, thinking about the future has almost become futile.

It’s funny how we stylized this year as “20/20 vision” because we sure didn’t see any of this coming.

Last January 30, the Philippines recorded its first COVID-19 case. We called it 2019-nCoV at the time. Back then, it was easy to attach a name to a number, so they released each new patient’s details for the public’s information: their age, their place of residence, the hospital they were in, and their travel history.

But then, we hit 100, and identifying every case became cumbersome. Then, we reached 500. Then, 1,000. 5,000. 10,000. 20,000. Then, we began recording 2,000 cases per day. On August 10, we tallied the highest single-day spike in infections: 6,958 — a number that used to only represent our total.

As of writing, we’ve long breached the 200,000-mark.

On March 16, we put selected areas in the country under enhanced community quarantine. Back then, the 30-day lockdown seemed too much. What were we going to do cooped up in our homes for a whole month? I thought it would only take two months tops to contain the virus (and, obviously, I was wrong). I imagined we would do what the likes of South Korea did in combatting the pandemic — and with more urgency and aggression because we had the lead time and a model to follow. But that didn’t happen. And while our neighbors were already effectuating a travel ban to delay the entry of the virus in their territories, the Philippines kept dismissing the need for it.

“We haven’t reached that level of contamination yet,” they said.

Now, here we are, in quarantine for more than half a year. We’re still nowhere near flattening the curve. I’m no statistician, but the graphs don’t look flat to me. Our sum of cases is blowing up on the daily. Our hospitals are approaching full capacity. Our medical health workers are growing tired. Our economy is collapsing. Businesses are closing down. Employees are losing their jobs. Filipinos are starving. People are dying. And in spite of all that, high-ranking officials still have the audacity to tell us that “we’re winning.” No, we are not winning. We are far from winning.

Today, we don’t bother finding out where the cases are coming from anymore. What’s more important now is whether the virus has arrived in our towns or barangays or not yet. Because at the rate this has all been going, it’s only a matter of time before the virus starts creeping into our workplaces, our neighborhoods, and — God forbid — our homes. Heck, it has already happened to many of us.

It’s obvious that a cure is the only way to end this. But how long we have to wait is anybody’s guess.

The other day, someone asked me how I’m doing with the goals I set for myself. Frankly, I don’t care about my postponed or canceled plans anymore. At this point, I only have one plan left, and that is to survive today. And the next day. And the next. With my sanity intact. And with the hope that the following day becomes the day that the virus is no more. That we will go back to when there was no pandemic, where social distancing was a foreign concept, and face masks weren’t part of our everyday lives.

My plans can wait. I have to put them on hold if I want to get out of this alive. But I would be lying if I said I’m not hanging on to the belief that what I wrote in my journal will come true one day. That we can resume the lives we had to put on pause. And I say this with no intention of sounding pseudo-positive.

So, until then, we have no other choice but to tread on. Even when the end of all this is nowhere in sight.