Vague on wave

"We dread the coming, not of more ripples, not more waves, but a tsunami."

From January to February until the middle of March, we were quite complacent, basking in the number of cases quite low compared to the rest of humanity. Because that is what our Department of Health told us.

We first discovered that three visitors from the middle of the Middle Kingdom had symptoms of a new coronavirus ,the original locus of which the mandarins of the Kingdom had already declared locked down. As in, no exit for all inhabitants and no entry from elsewhere.

But our Department of Health, led by a “duke” of our kingdom of islands, assured us there was nothing much to worry about, and he was on top of the situation.

When the legal representatives of the “vox populi,” Congress mismo, worried about the transmission of the virus from the Middle Kingdom, and proposed that we ban the entry of visitors from it, as some neighboring countries had already done, the duke said nay, because there were “political and diplomatic complications.”

Did he have the diplomatic and political expertise to worry about complications, let alone publicly declare against such complications? But then those who had the responsibility to question his political and diplomatic expertise chose to remain silent, probably because he was the duke, and he was in charge of the defense against the viral enemy. To each his own.

And so visitors from the Middle Kingdom came in droves, though the numbers are really trickles compared to the planeloads they disgorged upon Italy to reciprocate the visit of Marco Polo centuries ago. A cruise ship was allowed to dock in Manila Bay; chartered planes were allowed to land in Kalibo to visit our fabled Boracay; and wonder of wonders, even land in the southern stronghold of our king.

Blithely, the duke assured us we were all right. By the last days of January, when the trickles from the Middle Kingdom had already gone back because their lunar holidays were over, we were still being assured. Some of us even thought that since it was cold in our neighboring kingdom, it being the dead of their winter, the warm and humid climate of our islands was enough balm to shield us from the contagion nearby.

And even as our neighbors cupped their facial apertures with masks of unwoven cloth, the duke and his subjects told us that was not necessary, unless we were experiencing symptoms of the contagion. Further he told us that the asymptomatic do not spread the virus, misquoting the World Health Council which by then had already declared a pandemic.

Three cases, all imported from the Middle Kingdom, were discovered a week meanwhile. And so the Council of Emergency Response, headed by the duke, was forced, despite “diplomatic and political” considerations, to ban the entry of visitors from the Middle Kingdom on the first week of February. Days later, in happenstance likely reminded by the emissaries of the Middle Kingdom, on February 10, the Council headed by the duke added territory the Middle Kingdom claimed to be part of it. Mercifully, the Council, four days later, decided to overturn the duke. But by then, the contagion was already spreading with stealth, beneath the radar of the duke.

By the middle of March, the alarm bells were so loud and the whole world was agog, such that the king decided to lock 60 percent of the inhabitants down in their abode, whether mansion or packed hovels. And ordered a massive infusion of financial aid to households who could not work and therefore could hardly eat.

A week or so later, the king appointed an overseer, a capo di tutti cappi, to manage the crisis, thus dislodging the duke from heading the Council of Emergency Response. “Chief implementer,” he called him. In some other clime, this would have been taken as a cue by the likes of the duke. But no, not the imperturbable duke.

Those three initial cases, the duke now tells us, was the “first wave.” Senator Zubiri from the highlands of Mindanao, where waves are seen a hundred kilometers away in the lowlands of Misamis, himself infected by the virus as one of the cases between three and 13, wondered aloud how three could be called “waves.” Aren’t they just “ripples”, observed he. Just a case of lapsus lingua, said one of the apologists of the duke. Which the duke corrected, maintaining with disingenuity that the first wave was a “casual expression of an epidemiological fact.”

The king’s spokesman objected. The other members of the Council, themselves members of the palace Privy Council, objected to the first-wave description. Even the king’s primus inter pares in the highest Council publicly chafed at the first wave declaration of the duke. But the duke remained unperturbed. Why should he quiver?

Weeks back, 14 of the king’s men in the Senate publicly called for the resignation of the duke. They deliberately excluded the opposition from their resolution, so the king would see that their numbers were compelling enough despite absence from the usual naysayers, the three still standing and the one kept in the Tower of Crame. Add the four to the fourteen and you would have enough numbers to tell the duke that he was extremely unwanted. But the duke remains unmoved. Who cares about the Senate when the king himself has not wielded the axe?

Now three in February has become 14,035 -- and still counting. This is already the second wave, remember, as postulated by the duke. From three ripples into a major second wave, all in the space of less than three months, and despite locking down all of Luzon and so many islands and cities, including the king’s original home of Cebu and his suzerainty of Davao.

What roils underneath the giant “second” waves we have yet to know, as thousands upon thousands of our overseas workers return from their toils abroad. And because no tests have been done by the duke and his sub-alterns when the “first wave” was just three ripples and beyond.

To be sure, there were examples for all to see, from Taiwan to South Korea to Vietnam, to even distant New Zealand and Scandinavia, on how the wave could be tamed. Nothing vague about what they did and are still doing. In fact, they have been quite open and transparent about their actions, sharing with the world how they tamed and are taming the contagion.

Ah! But the duke refuses to see, looking only at his “gold” standard, and basking in the continued glow of the king’s public favor, even if the same king had appointed more and more kingsmen to “assist” the clearly beleaguered duke. The duke refuses to see the handwriting; only the “gold” in his standard.

Now the senators unearth some examples of “fool’s gold” in the duke’s gold standard.

And the king wants an explanation. How indeed could commoners pay half the price of what the treasury paid for the same thing? Even as his minister of the exchequer was at his wit’s end raising more gold to buy food for the commonest of the commons?

Yet the duke remains untouched, unscathed, like Teflon upon which gold cannot melt, or so the duke believes.

Nobody in the kingdom takes the duke seriously, but even his confreres in the Council of Emergency Response which once he headed find themselves unable to tell the king the agonizing facts they have had to endure in the past four months.

Meanwhile we dread the coming not of more ripples, not more waves, but a tsunami. Must we wait for the “daluyong” to sweep away the “duke”?