On the rise, again...

And we're back to this... By this, I mean restrictions to mobility. So, unless you're going out for essentials (food, medicines, supplies), it's best to stay at home. At least for the next two weeks.

For a while in early December, everyone was happy to be allowed out once again. COVID cases were down (just 200 or so a day), and that was for a couple of weeks. Oh, joy! Kids could go out. You could dine in. Wow, you could even hang out at the mall.

I was like 'yikes!' Yes, being cooped up at home for close to two years was not fun. I'm going bonkers myself being confined in a space with people who are close to driving me nuts, but I did not want to get sick. For that matter, I didn't want anyone in my household to be struck with a virus and head to a health facility.

But allowing most everyone to go out, and live as if life were normal again, I was shaking my head... vigorously at times when I see photos or video clips of crowded places.

Before restrictions were eased, I've always been frustrated when I went out and would see folks improperly wearing their face masks, if not going without one at all, or using their face shields as a cap or headband, and people not minding how close they were to others in enclosed spaces.

I can't be the only one observing minimum health protocols! It just isn't going to work that way. So, it is annoying to be doing your part while others disregard them and go about their life as if everything is back to normal pre-pandemic.

So, each time I had to do the grocery I either made sure to go at some dead hour, or if unavoidable, to be in and out of the store in a flash. And I do not care if people think me aloof or standoffish as I put distance between us when queuing. I am only protecting myself and those living with me.

Then there are the stories of how faulty and lacking the contact-tracing system was, which was laughable that it can make you rage. How can you hope to do contact tracing efficiently when the people you recruit to do the task aren't even carefully screened?

With just one question asked during the interview (Do you know what contact tracing is?), how can you even determine an applicant's competence to carry out a sensitive task? And then there are the logistics... People lined up to be contact tracers primarily for the money. So, why are they being asked to advance transportation and communication expenses, which are prerequisites to accomplish the assignment, and be paid three months after?

On the part of the public, who were being subjected to investigation for possibly being in contact with a COVID-positive individual, many didn't like to be forthright with their answers. No one wanted to admit they exhibited symptoms because no one wanted to be told they're sick and need to be confined in a health facility... until it was too late!

This was especially true among those in lower-income households, who worried about leaving their families, children especially, if they had to be put in isolation. How will their family survive? Who will take care of the kids? So... they'd rather not disclose their whereabouts, or if they were feeling symptoms already.

And those forms or logbooks where people had to sign in and leave their numbers for possible contact tracing? Half of those who logged in would just scrawl ineligibly their numbers and names! How can you properly get in touch with them?

Further compounding the problem now are returning citizens or residents who breach quarantine because they can... they have money and influence, and are brazen enough to think the rules do not apply to them. What are these people thinking?

So now, cases are again on the rise. At alarming rates. And the decision is not just to restrict movement again, but to keep the unvaccinated at home totally, if possible.

I was just waiting when they would start reporting a rise in the cases because I did not, even for one second, believe it would not and that we would be out of the woods. I'm just grateful medical personnel were able to breathe a little during Christmas or the run-up to Christmas because they didn't have many COVID patients to attend to.

Of course I want the numbers to drop! But I am realistic enough to accept that unless every single person in this country does their part, the SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID will continue to haunt us this 2022.

Young American poet Amanda Gorman has a new piece titled "New Day's Lyric" and I want to quote lines of her poem that paints everything so real at this time:

... Even if we never get back to normal,/ Someday we can venture beyond it,/ To leave the known and take the first steps./So let us not return to what was normal,/But reach toward what is next./What was cursed, we will cure/What was plagued, we will prove pure./Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree...

We want to move on, leave behind this nightmare. But we can only do that when we, all of us, agree that it is not just government's responsibility to quash this health scourge, and its defeat depends on every citizen, every individual, and their resolve to fight it and win.

Images from Unsplash