OK WE get it, man is a social animal. Despite now being threatened into a continued self-isolation by the pandemic COVID-19, he will still insist on this nature and find ways to meet up with family and other people. In psychology, it is even recognized as a scientific fact that the urge to touch, which at the very least could mean, skin to skin even at the briefest of moments, is an instinctive quality in everyone.
Also as additional trivia, dyk that the sense of touch is the first of the five senses to develop and because of this, a mother’s touch plays an important role in infant development? However, while these are all textbook claims, in reality, to try to disprove its value and potency spectacularly fails each time.
Since March, the general call for all the citizens of the world to, at the very least, practice quarantine and social distancing in order to fight COVID-19, is a case in point. True, some countries and communities have recorded significant drops in the number of positive cases. Also true that the successful flattening of the curve, so to speak, had been made possible with mask and shield protection or PPEs, quarantine or self-isolation and lastly, maintaining clean hands.
However, as medical frontliners will attest that the continued breakouts and spikes in positive cases, even in areas already proclaimed cleansed, are largely caused by lapses in the said protocols, and most often not by anything else.
While there lies a certain logic in the contention of some conspiracy theorists that for one, more testing leads to more cases, the onset of more cases can only be prevented if the combination of protection, isolation and disinfection is followed. In the absence of a vaccine that is still to be developed, this trio remains as our best, but proven bet yet.
Just recently, a Manila doctor had revealed that, basing on his nth number of COVID-19 patients, majority of these were traced to their frequent visits to isolated relatives, and their vulnerable old folks in particular. “Why do people insist on visiting relatives, and friends, even elderly ones, in person, in the middle of a pandemic?” He had twittered.
For one, I could tell him culture and tradition of course, play large speaking parts in this pandemic script. With this said, objectivity might as well jump out the window and elope with corona. Truth is, the deeper one goes into the sub-streets of the far-flung provinces and barrios, that particular Manila doctor’s words will amount to little else but just a mere cry in this covid storm.
In hindsight, he had likewise mentioned the unnecessary-ness of visiting elderly relatives that are already sheltered in place, and to the extent, further hyping that, as social animals and pinoys at that, are we willing to accept the guilt of contaminating our loved ones and putting them in harm’s way?
That may have already been a case of argumentum ad OA right there, but the opinion here remains: as long as everyone maintains the safe standards presently in use, go-go trad! That’s akin to the two birds in one stone application, is it not?
