No popcorn time yet

Tab a line on the politicians’ side in this debate about the reopening of the economy because those two weeks of extending the stiffer rules on the citizens’ movement amid a still raging pandemic make sense.

Really.

That the Metro Manila mayors were practical and reasonable in their protests against the reopening of cinemas and other places of entertainment should be highlighted by the fact that we do not have yet any deal with any vaccine makers.

Yes, there’s none yet as of this writing.

All these talks about purchasing vaccines are just talks. It will take maybe the same number of days as the Metro Manila mayors had won in pushing back the reopening of entertainment venues to 1 March before we could get the volumes of the badly awaited vaccines.

Meetings, both physical and virtual, happen every day between the government and health officials and the representatives of the various pharmaceutical companies, which have rolled out their vials (or at least promised to), but the actual deliveries would not happen overnight.

Not today. Not tomorrow. Even the general population in wealthier countries have to wait for their turn to get inoculated. That’s the unspoken rule.

Here at home, the first in line will be the health and other frontline workers, including state forces, and the vulnerable sectors of society — the elderly and those nursing more serious ailments.

The pressure on the economy is immense, however. That, we could understand.

Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua late Monday night urged President Duterte to place the entire country under modified general community quarantine (MGCQ).

It’s the least stringent lockdown status that he wants to start

also on 1 March.

Chua had echoed the pleas of business groups whose members are feeling the pinch of the lockdown.

Cited as a model for the easing of the restriction was our experience from the last Christmas holiday when there was no big spike in the number of Covid-19 cases as expected.

Metro Manila, however, was then under a stricter GCQ as it remains today. There had been extra efforts to remind the public against going out and holding Christmas and

New Year’s Eve parties.

What the businessmen want now is different.

They want public transport to expand from 50 percent capacity to 75 percent to accommodate the commuters going to and leaving their workplaces.

Business leaders want those not younger than five-years-old and not older than 70 to be allowed to go out of their homes.

Face-to-face classes should resume, they say.

With people outside of their homes, the economy should move. The malls will have more human activity, restaurants will have their patrons back, fuel stations will see the queues return, and many more.

It’s not just the cinemas and the popcorn corners, my friends.

But we’ll go back to the first question: When are the vaccines coming?

The metro mayors know the dangers of all these.

They would rather not have foot traffic on the streets that would soon lead back to and overwhelm their hospitals.

A journey back to where we started with this pandemic is not worth the gamble.

“The metro mayors know the dangers of all these. They would rather not have foot traffic on the streets that would soon lead back to and overwhelm their hospitals.

“Cited

as a model for the easing of the restriction was our experience from the last Christmas holiday when there was no big spike in the number of Covid-19 cases as expected.