Metro Manila Community Quarantine - Day 578
The IATF just announced that Metro Manila will shift to "Alert Level 3" starting 16 October. This means relaxing a lot of rules that have been in place for a while including surprising announcements like re-opening movie theaters at a limited capacity but only for fully vaccinated individuals. I don't necessarily agree that it's safe enough to do so, but I'm also in no position to influence our government's COVID-19 response. As much as I miss going to the movies, if it means staying in an enclosed environment breathing the same recirculated air for 2+ hours, that doesn't feel like a great idea.
Follow my logic here for a moment.
While it is a bit of relief that our daily COVID-19 numbers are back to 4-digits as of, well, the last 3 days at least, our current daily case numbers are still higher than when we first returned to ECQ during the first quarter of the year. And yes, this is on a national level and I don't have a convenient chart for Metro Manila, I don't think things have changed all that significantly. And while vaccination numbers are a lot better now than at the start of the year, it's also wildly uneven with a significant number of people still moving around unvaccinated.
The same rules go to the detail of still banning in-home gatherings that include individuals who are from different households (e.g. board game friends), so I guess our building still won't lift its no guest rules. But then what makes it safe enough to be in a movie theater with even more people from different households? The inconsistency is jarring and we all know it's because of economic pressure and not necessarily sound public health thinking.
So what else is new, eh? People can go watch a movie in a cinema but we can't...*checks memo*...attend a live performance that involves wind instruments. And they've also announced that cemeteries will be closed again this year to prevent people from gathering there despite it being more open-air than a mall. Yep, we can get into that level of detail about certain things but we hand wave so many other things because the economy needs to get moving again and somehow movie theaters are going to do that for us.
Are we going to go to the movies? I doubt it - at least not for the next month or so. Our running average for new COVID-19 cases specifically in Taguig is 15+, which is higher than our September average but around the same level as our August average. Maybe other people feel it's safe enough to risk exposure a bit more, and that's their choice. I still hold that getting COVID-19 would be too complicated for us because of the risks of needing to rely on a government quarantine facility and our responsibilities for our respective families.
So we're still staying home for now. We're still following our condo's rules on not allowing guests no matter how much we miss playing board games with friends in-person. And we'll content ourselves with watching different movies via streaming services instead of on the big screen. I think the possibility of seeing the new Dune movie in a theater does tempt me significantly, but we'll continue to watch the case numbers to see how this new policy may affect things.
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