Quarantine and connections

Now why would the woman who famously broke quarantine and went partying a day after arriving from the United States have the nerve to behave in that manner, despite stringent rules, if she weren’t sufficiently certain that she could get away with it? From accounts, she had no intention of skulking around incognito; she had no qualms about recording her caper even on TikTok, which was how she was found out by authorities.

The woman, identified as Gwyneth Anne Chua by Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo Puyat in her demand letter to Berjaya Makati Hotel for an explanation, actually bragged about “connections” that made her escapade possible. Per Puyat, the Department of Tourism is in possession of sworn statements by witnesses detailing the woman’s night out in Poblacion, Makati, which included stops at Mijo Comfort Food and Kampai Bar. There’s also a picture posted online of her and her friends posing happily in close quarters—with no one wearing a face mask.

Granted it was great to hang out with friends during the holiday season, particularly after an extended lockdown that strictly limited people’s movements and all but killed social life as we knew it. The surge of merrymakers in the weeks before (and even after) the presence of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 was discovered was heartening to the owners of commercial establishments that floundered in this continuing pandemic (many have in fact gone completely under). But in this drawn-out health crisis, it has become an ethical obligation to look after others in the course of looking after oneself. This means hewing to established protocols including submitting to quarantine regulations to ensure the safety of others along with one’s own.

As reported, 15 people not counting the woman-with-connections may be positive for the coronavirus after that festive gathering. Imagine, as in a horror movie, how many others could have been infected during her happy hours, their condition unbeknownst even to themselves and conceivably spreading the contagion and general aggravation. It’s not for nothing that Omicron has been described by world health authorities as “extraordinarily contagious.”

Berjaya Hotel, where the woman should have been quarantined and presumably where some of her connections are at, has issued a statement promising punishment to those found complicit in the crime. For crime it was, and not a mere holiday lark enjoyed by an enthusiastic merrymaker: According to Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, the woman could be charged with violating local ordinances as well as Republic Act No. 11332, or the Mandatory Reporting of Notifiable Diseases and Health Events of Public Health Concern Act. It is presumed that her aiders and abettors would be charged as well.

Still, remarkable is the diffidence with which authorities have been handling this case of willful insubordination to the law and blatant disregard of public health. Likewise remarkable is the obvious effort to protect the privacy of “Poblacion Girl,” as she has come to be known. It’s of a piece with the lack of official censure, the indulgence even, that greeted the birthday “mañanita” thrown last year for then Philippine National Police chief Debold Sinas by his subordinates, when the pandemic was gathering steam. (No offense intended, Sinas said. And, eventually, none taken.)

Nothing of the sort occurred in the case of Darren Peñaredondo of General Trias, Cavite. In April 2021, the 28-year-old was spotted by police in the street past 6 p.m. buying drinking water, and arrested for violating curfew. From his family’s account, he and others similarly taken in were ordered by police to do squats as punishment, and to do more if they were not performing in sync. All told, the squats amounted to 300—an ordeal that proved so arduous that he collapsed the next day and died. And who can forget the outrageous killing of retired military officer Winston Ragos, who was accosted in the street by Quezon City police in April 2020 for violating curfew? Despite neighbors’ protestations that he was suffering mental trauma, he was harassed and shot dead on the mistaken notion that he was reaching for a gun in his bag. (He was unarmed.)

As expected in these parts, other people supposedly in quarantine are at large, with authorities unable to deal with, let alone sanction, hotels that withhold the suspects’ names. On Monday, Puyat recounted another perverse demonstration of petty power: a traveler arriving from the United States not bothering to check into a quarantine hotel, and subsequently enjoying a massage in her condo. All these episodes were posted online in a gleeful exhibitionist display — “proud na proud” was how Puyat described the offender.

Surely she had connections.