Treasure the Question

Today, in Rick Olivares ’ Intro to Journalism class , we met a superhero. He was not wearing a cape, but he was still wearing his superhero mask, except it was a surgical mask and his cape, standard Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) . This real-life Superman was obviously exhausted from a day working hard saving lives and yet he found the time to recount his story to a class of novice journalism students. Like most champions of the Marvel or DC universes, he dons his uniform before turning into a hero, and takes it off when protecting us is done; unlike them, he then thoroughly disinfects himself before seeing his family. What is even more amazing is he is married to another superhero. Yet this is no comic, this is real life. Today we interviewed Jojo Katalbas, a 40-year old comorbidity nurse who works at Quirino Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City, a Covid-19 hospital at the heart of a nation suffering from the pandemic. We shed tears listening to his acts of bravery, and

Covid-19 has an ugly and dangerous twin, misinformation. While the world has been fighting the pandemic, the amount of information it has generated is causing serious problems of its own. The abundance of academic articles, press, commentary, social media postings, all about the same topic - many inaccurate, others not - make some Doctors feel as if they are fighting two enemies, Covid-19 and misinformation. The World Health Organisation (WHO) have labelled the twin an “infodemic”, and it is making it hard to know what is trustworthy and what is not. Once-upon-a-time, before the pandemic, Snopes was the gold standard for fighting misinformation. If something did not sound quite right, if you needed the truth, a quote from Snopes could end the argument. That is no longer the case when it comes to Covid-19, the sheer volume of misinformation has overwhelmed the Snopes fact checkers and they have admitted they can no longer keep up with the avalanche of misinformation.   Some misinfor

Ten minutes to eternity, that is how it felt. Having been chosen at random for an antibody test felt like a win, I would know if my earlier illness was Covid-19. We had all been ill and my father had almost needed help to breath. An antibody test would give us certainty. Then the test arrived, and with it the, what if? Did I really want to know? Fear paralysed me; denial gripped me. Eight hours later I requested help. We read the instructions; my brain was a fog. Everything was prepared; the testing fluid, the lance, the test, the clock. I was not concerned about the lance or the blood, I was not even fearful of the test. It was the time that got to me. Ten minutes wait, each second seemed to take forever. Tick, tick, was this a timebomb? I was praying for that second line, for certainty, but certainty never came. Ten minutes were up, no line, no certainty, just more time with Covid-19 lurking in eternity. We are all in this pandemic together, one thing we all have time.