REVISED--The Way It Is METROPOST JUNE 20 - JUNE 26, 2021 OPINION 5


PEOPLES CORNER


(B.1.617.2), first described in India? 1. It likely drove the Indian surge in April, sickening more than 300 thousand people each day, and killing over four thousand each day.


W


hat do we know about the CoViD Delta variant


5. Face masks and face shields, and physical distancing WORK, and I would use ALL THESE MEASURES, especially since this Delta variant is also more transmissible outdoors.


2. It is 60 percent more transmissible indoors, and up to 40 percent more transmissible OUTDOORS. 3. It is causing surges in the US, the United Kingdom, China, Indonesia, and has been reported in nearly 80 countries. The World Health Organization is VERY concerned.


to prevent the severe disease but they work best when people are FULLY- vaccinated.


4. Vaccines still seem


of the Delta variant in the Philippines, all from travelers, and have since been properly quarantined. One died. So far, there is NO community transmission. 7. The biggest risk for entry of variants is POOR BORDER CONTROL. When Taiwan decreased their quarantine protocols for unvaccinated pilots to three days with testing, they ended up with a large SURGE.


A recent Delta case in Australia has been linked


IAN ROSALES CASOCOT


TEMPEST IN A COFFEEMUG


icasocot@gmail.com


hunt. He takes on an avatar for this. On the pick-up app, he’s “David Ezra,” the theatre actor and singer and son of Dulce, complete with a few other candid snapshots of the man ready to send when a prospect asks for more pictures to seal the deal. “It cushions the blows


O


n Grindr, a friend of mine—who will not be named—goes on a


By June 6th, he tells me he’s on conquest #261, in a kind of race to accumulate numbers, of which he only has some vague reasons (“midlife crisis and pandemic anxieties”) for reaching. But the accumulation has become a personal goal. “I want to make it to 1,000 by December,” he says. “At the rate I’m going, it’s kaya ra.” When he tells me this, I am not shocked—but I ask for elaboration. The fact that he is readily giving me his story means he is in need for someone to talk to, perhaps to even clarify for himself why it is something he has to do. He tells me he has just gotten over his ex-boyfriend, the one he shared years of togetherness before they broke up almost a decade ago when the ex-boyfriend asked for firmer commitment and my friend was not ready to settle for a fully domesticated life regardless of love. They continued living together for sometime, until the ex- boyfriend moved abroad, and met another man—sending my friend to a tailspin of recriminations and regrets, and pushing him to midlife worries that did not seem to dissipate with the years.


But now he tells me he has gone past that.


And also this: “I realized I never whored around my


of rejection,” he tells me. “Before, without the avatar, they rejected me. Now it’s the avatar they reject—but me they accept, if they accept. I call it reverse catfishing.” And then, after a while, he admits: “David Ezra gives me courage.” He has been on Grindr with a passion equal to an obsession since February 2021, prodded by a mix of midlife crisis and pandemic anxieties—which snowballed to a kind of marathon of sexual conquests without inhibition, that even he has come to terms with it by philosophizing his need.


entire life—all 42 years of it. Then on [my adopted son’s] birthday, I had sex with a guy who reminded me of me. Like me, he was young, Chinese, and closeted. And then I decided to get a haircut, after a year of not having one. Then, boom, something clicked. I looked at myself in the mirror, and said, ‘Hey, I’m actually cute. Actually gwapo. And a daddy. And Tsinoy. What stopped me before was all my restrictive social and intellectual filters. I decided right then and there to throw precautions away. I went to have sex. That’s my answer now to things. Damn the pandemic and midlife crisis: just go have sex.” After Grindr, when the


connection is made, he picks them up in his car. “Having a car is having power,” he tells me. The encounter is mostly what he calls “car fun.” Sometimes they go to a hotel. Often he takes them to a friend’s condominium, which is just


right near his neighborhood. The friend is a former lover but now based somewhere else in the Philippines. He has given my friend the key to his apartment—and now it serves as a rendezvous for his Grindr pick-ups. But he likes doing the deed in his car. He takes them to different places—beside churches, on side streets, on mall parking lots, even on busy streets, and at different times, too, but mostly early morning or night. Most of the time, he uses a car that’s super-tinted. But he likes using another car that’s only medium-tinted car. “The medium tint is fun and dangerous,” he confesses, “because people can see.” There are no real names exchanged in these encounters. When asked, he gives them an alias: he’s “Michael Tan,” whose mother is from Taiwan. (Sometimes, when he likes the guy, he does tell them his real name.)


to ask out on a date. “My avatar, David Ezra, made it possible,” he says. “When I finally unmasked myself, he knew who I was, of course. When I kissed him,


like one of those moments straight from YA novels.” The encounter, he tells me, was one for the books—they parked beside a church, and when they almost got caught, opted to go to a hotel. “It felt like young and careless sex, or love,” he says. “Wild abandon.” Then there’s the muscled


it felt 6. We have had 13 cases


to a driver who interacted with international flight crews.


8.Public health measures including the use of face masks AND face shields, strict border quarantine, and vaccination policies are anchored on REAL SCIENCE and WILL SAVE LIVES.


contest. The virus doesn’t care if it’s election season. It will kill people regardless of who you support. Let’s all protect each other. Stay safe.


Dr. Edsel Maurice Salvana


UP National Institutes of Health


Institute of Molecular Biology & Biotechnology


This is NOT a popularity T BRIAN JOSEPH M. CALINAWAGAN, MD


WHAT’S UP, DOC?


brianjcmd@hotmail.com


o those of us who don and doff, who have seen waves and waves of COVID patients in the past year, and in this present surge, cater to the endless parade of faces that have gone through and out our doors, one way or the other, I share your pain.


concerned about self- preservation, some turn patients away afraid, and yes, sad, but not totally disheartening.


of breathless patients who need our care.


We have shared sweat, effort, and tears this year, and we will continue to


do so.


We live in a different world than those who criticize us. We live in a world where each number on the pulse oximeter matters. We


get your antivirals and steroids on time. Though ultimately, we know it’s your decision. But we advise you on treatment with evidence, not hearsay. I know this is not a shared idealism, even among doctors and allied health personnel. Some have renounced their oaths to serve; some more


care that you


For where one shrinks away, others will heroically take arms, or find new confidence to stand on the frontlines with us. To all who look out at us, be it with respect or in pity, disgust or


appreciation, know that we try our best.


there and criticize, we understand. If you wish to help, then help us in your own way. Wear your masks properly. Refrain from organizing or attending celebrations. Help us move vaccination lines by encouraging sign-


If you wish to stand


I am tired. You are tired. We all are. It is hard to look in a


patient’s eyes, and know that these few breaths are the last ones they take. They will die alone. We call loved ones on video call to try and ease the burden, and let them listen to parting words of love and tears, and it is never easy.


when you are frustrated that you cannot hold your beloved before they are cremated.


We take your anger


We despair about what to do about the long lines


MYRNA PEÑA-REYES MADAHAN! You Only Live Once


twink, a model. “One of the best bodies I’ve had partnered with. Iron abs,” he tells me. “He taught me about ‘vibe,’ that it’s not really how you looked—not a matter of being gwapo or panget—but all about your vibe. That was what he was looking for when he asked for photos over Grindr. I sent him three David Ezra photos. After we had sex, I dropped him at his mother’s place. And then he messaged me, that he had fun but was wondering why I didn’t send him my real pictures. He would


have had sex with me anyway, because we vibed. I said my apologies and changed the topic.”


whose real name my friend does not want to know. He calls him “Runtime Error” instead. “He’s very memorable because he’s very gentle, very real—and we have the most intimate sex. He’s probably the person I’ve had sex with the most these days. Usually it’s just once or twice with most people—but this one made it past three. I don’t know his name. And he doesn’t bring a wallet so I can’t peek into it and get the name. And he doesn’t ask me as well. But I do know some details. Like I know he has a girlfriend in Manila, and that he wants to marry—but he is going to tell her that he’s bisexual before he proposes.” There are so many others.


“Are you happy with these encounters?” I ask him. “Oh, yes,” he answers. “Very much so. I can tell you the stories. Grabe. I like listening to them. I like finding out what they do, where they’re from. I like listening to their love stories.”


There is this local singer he had crushed on for so long, but never had the courage


He has a litany of names. “This one is the most beautiful of them all. This one is a staffer of a friend who blocked me on Facebook. This one is an events host and pageant boy. So many stories,” he says. There’s the banker who lives in a posh subdivision. There’s the guy who loves to sing Hamilton and who lives in Danao. There’s the guy who helped push his car when it ran out of gas. There’s


TO PAGE 8 Then there’s the triathlete I


quarrels? My attention was called to the comments of a reader (June 13, MetroPost) who found fault with some of the published tributes (including mine) honoring the late Vice Mayor Alan Gel Cordova (June 6, MetroPost). This


reader asks: “Can the virtue of goodness unconditionally stand by itself?” No. Goodness is an


faul t- f inding


s someone who’s trying hard to be relevant picking unnecessary


They have to be cool in order to survive the heat in the kitchen. C’est la vie. Only amateur wannabes, hangers- on, or eager-to-please apologists—factotums (we have other names for them)—would show their onion-skin sensitivity about people’s remarks that go with the territory. The specific statements


abstract concept that has to be particularized or dramatized in a person or something, for us to recognize and understand it. To be assessed or evaluated, ‘goodness’ needs to be seen or measured against its opposite. This


condescending reaction to our spontaneous, heartfelt tributes is disrespectful, petty, and pathetic. That our sentiments


reader’s


in our essays that this reader singled out should not be so surprising or shocking—they are the usual expressions of people who regret the trapos in government; can be cliché sentiments, in fact.


Respect and love have


would set apart the late revered public official from other politicians is not so unusual. It’s the most natural thing. And seasoned


politicians know better not to show publicly (or pretend) that the comments bother them. (You know, “Stick and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”) Most, if not all, professional politicians learn to be thick-skinned about public criticism.


to be earned. The late Vice Mayor Alan Gel Cordova earned ours. So what if we seemed to overstate our adulation of him? Why would anyone begrudge us for feeling so strongly about him? Why does one have to actually experience in person the popular Vice Mayor mingling at the painitan and tiangge, to have the right to think that the people there would surely recognize him as the humble, unique politician, forthright, service-committed, and incorruptible, the personification of a genuine public servant? Isn’t it enough to just have read and heard about this common observation, as I declared at the beginning of my piece?


What’s the fuss over “bifurcation” (big word!) that this offended reader raises? This reader self- righteously dismisses my sentiments as “nothing but an excessive adulation or an outburst of someone with an axe to grind”. Huh? How would he know how I’m thinking? Can he read minds? Is he a psychologist, too? Or is he just projecting his own angst? (Get over it, move on!)


This same pretentious reader, disallowing “different strokes for different folks,” presumes to lecture us on the proper way to wr ite


Picking quarrels


virtue. Abaw gid oy! He questions our motives for writing our tributes, mocks the way we phrased our thoughts: “…stereotypic case of mythologizing or character assassination,” “…high falutin and nonsensical”. Madahan uroy…Give me a break!


goodness, as if he were suddenly the paragon of correctness and


about


ups, and seeing them go through with the actual shots. The time for talk has passed. Actions, long needed, now have to happen. If anything, the virus, by now, should have your respect.


It has evolved, and survived more than we have. It should not be looked at through lenses of fear, but through the eyes of


There has got to be something better.


understanding that NOBODY will be safe until EVERYBODY is safe.


science, and


Who is he to question our motives and spontaneous expressions of hurt and loss, our deep admiration for a uniquely- different public servant who left us too soon? Why this aggrieved reader’s angry and defensive-sounding reaction? What brought on his pique?


Aha! Could it be… Bato-bato sa langit…? Enough said.


Photo by Carmen del Prado


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