[OPINION] Post-quarantine

Is society ready for a world after quarantine?

At this point, we thought we would already know. But after the first declaration of an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) over the entire Luzon last March 17, President Duterte has since extended the ECQ until the end of April. While the extension was met with mixed reactions, many nonetheless understood that it was a necessary response to the pandemic.

Thus, following Easter Sunday, many roads resumed their silence. At the peak of the country’s summer season, even dust had seemingly settled into place and only distant sounds of human activity could be heard in the humid air.

When the Chinese government declared a lockdown over Hubei province months ago, it was believed to be the largest quarantine attempt in human history. We tensely anticipated updates about the effectiveness of the draconian move, not expecting that in a few months the rest of the world would be transformed from mere spectators into actual participants themselves.

Since the World Health Organization’s call for all countries to implement efforts in slowing the virus, a third of the globe has been placed in some form of restriction or another.

And while apprehension heightened, we also pounced on organizations, governments, and leaders that we thought failed in responding to the pandemic quickly and adequately. But we have to admit a pandemic of this scale can truly dent even the sturdiest of institutions. Most of us were simply caught off-guard.

What we could and should have done before the quarantine is all water under the bridge now. What we can control and truly prepare for is the aftermath of this quarantine, as we inch closer to its end. When the borders are finally opened, what then?

Are businesses ready to resume operations, when the quarantine has depleted many of their working capital and disrupted their business cycles? How will they meet plummeting consumer sentiment and a vastly changed market?

What of schools and universities? How will they meet adjusted academic calendars and modified course syllabi? What of our religious institutions? How will they tend to their frightened flock and sustain religious services that depend in large part on people coming together to worship as a community? And local and foreign governments: How will they mobilize exhausted health care systems and reassure bewildered citizens?

Unfortunately, the end of the quarantine is not the end of the virus. What we can only hope is for the dust to clear in its wake, and new mindsets to form that would allow us to evolve with the changed times. If it truly takes 21 days for new habits to form, then the quarantine period must be an opportunity for us to think over and develop new habits of living with the realities of the virus. The quarantine is not intended to be a penitentiary phase that should prompt us to rush enthusiastically into the streets as soon as our favorite stores open.

There is no normality to return to. Only a new normal to live. The sooner we embrace this, the less likely we are to anticipate the last day of quarantine as if it were New Year’s Eve. Rather, we should see it as the beginning of a new narrative of change. We can either come out on the other side as war-torn escapees of a war, or survivors alert to new opportunities, and willing to lock arms with each other if we have to do so.

Entrepreneurs can create new business models and synthesize supply chains. Academics can transform education and champion different learning systems. Innovators can further integrate technology with biology, such as the use of smartphones to track new infections.

Communities can pool resources to help the economically insecure and physically vulnerable, while also demanding that government should do its part to address inequalities and effect societal change. Ordinary citizens can forge self-discipline in the habits of personal health, interaction, and even consumption. We can also heal, in ways we may have never thought possible; we can no longer be the fretful hoarders and thoughtless citizens that we used to be before the quarantine.

As long as the threat of a pandemic is out there, we should consciously live as if we are in long-term restriction. But policymakers and governments have to continue to innovate as well, because we cannot forever be under quarantine.