Exasperating really, even from where we sit as observers, as we watch law enforcement agents implement the protocols and restrictions on people who may be in their view violating quarantine rules.
We are one with these agents, including the police who are on the streets on the catbird seat for those who may be ignoring, and therefore in their view violating, the protocols being implemented by the health authorities and the COVID-19 Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases.
One ludicrous, if infuriating, scenario was the case this month of COVID-19 survivor Howie Severino who was “briefly detained” by Quezon City law enforcers for alleged face mask violation, another term for not wearing the mask at the time of apprehension.
But somewhere near the “violator” the enforcers had lost their mother wit, their innate common sense translated into sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.
The facts, which were beyond appreciation by the overly enthusiastic law enforcers, included Severino “talking without my mask covering my mouth” when he was approached by law enforcers, soon after he, millisecond, pulled his mask down to consume his drink bought at a nearby store.
We find the absence of common sense and fellow feeling in that situation, the facts of the case clear
Severino's words: “We bought drinks at the store next door, and drank them after pulling down our masks below the mouth (because we have not learned to drink yet with masks on). We were all outdoors where the risk of infection is much lower than indoors and maintained at least four feet distance from each other.”
We need to heal as one, why not indeed? But we like to believe those who made the “arrest” or “invitation” for Severino to go to the crowded Amoranto gymnasium for a seminar were not robots but thinking bipeds who had untarnished copybook emotional intelligence.
Irritatingly irksome, that face mask framework.
