Timely lesson from ECQ in NCR+

MANY families in the National Capital Region grudgingly accepted their situation being placed under Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ)for two consecutive years – during the Holy Week. After all, Holy Week for them has always been a period for family leisure and travel.

Pangasinan has been luckier this time being placed under Modified General Community Quarantine (MGCQ) where travel restrictions are relaxed, and residents can move around with more ease. It also allows for our local economy to continue getting the crucial boost it needs for a viable start-up.

But lest Pangasinenses become careless, Pangasinan can easily be reverted to ECQ like people in NCR realized too late.

While the vaccine rollout has started here with most of our health and medical frontliners already inoculated with their allocated vaccines, our provincial government must launch an information drive further warning against lax enforcement of the established health and distance protocols, the sure formula for ECQ.

World Health Organization and medical experts have already warned that being vaccinated is not a guarantee that one is free from COVID-19 infection at anytime. The same protocols must be observed.

It was this ignorance and complete disregard of the protocols that triggered a dramatic surge in COVID cases in NCR. What happened to NCR+, can happen to us in Pangasinan. Let the second ECQ in NCR+ serve a critical lesson for us.

 

Painful obvious

ANTONIO T. Carpio and F. Sionil Jose are Filipino patriots of international renown.  Carpio, from Davao like President Duterte, is a retired senior justice of the Supreme Court.  Jose, the prolific writer from Rosales town, is a national artist for literature.  Both were headline-huggers recently for strongly advising Manny Pacquiao not to run for president in 2022.  They insist that while Pacquiao, the only eight-time world champion in history, is a boxing legend, he is not cut out for Malacanang.  They didn’t state the painful obvious: Pacquiao lacks the education, if not intellect, to wrestle with the grueling rigors that the position so demands from the Palace occupant.  Nobody can stop Pacquiao from pursuing his dream.  But it’d be wise for him to seriously consider the thoughts of Carpio and Jose.  The presidency isn’t just a jab, a left hook or a right uppercut.  It is all of it at once.  Everything.

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