As a writer, I always try my best to use the most perfect word to make sure that my reader and I are on the same dictionary page. So it has been interesting for me to observe how the administration has been playing loose with words since the lockdown. Speaking of which, let’s start from there.

LOCKDOWN

When the lockdown was announced, the former Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles insisted on calling it a community quarantine to avoid panic but everyone called the spade a spade, including the president himself who said, “We don’t want to use that term, because you are afraid to call it a lockdown. But it’s a lockdown.”

XENOPHOBIA

Before the lockdown, there was a call for a travel ban of flights coming from China. The president refused stating how it “has been kind to us...Stop this xenophobia thing" while being unbridled towards Obama, the Pope, the UN, the EU, the Catholic church, and God. He even called our very country “this f***ing country” while trying to reassure us of government effort to curb the pandemic.

MASS TESTING

DOH Secretary Dr. Francisco Duque admitted there has been no mass testing since the outbreak but instead of changing the situation, the government changed the term by calling it “expanded testing” but not without trying to mock the people for thinking that a mass testing means everyone will be tested. Netizens retorted that the public never thought that the government was going to marry, baptize, and bury everyone when it offered mass wedding, mass baptisms, and mass burials in the past.

FLATTENING THE CURVE

The DOH Secretary recently declared that we are in the second wave citing the first three Chinese cases in January as a small first wave. No one was impressed including his own agency and Malacañang. To flatten the curve, there must be a steep fall after a rise but as the secretary himself admitted, we had simply plateaued at the top.

 “THE LAW IS THE LAW”

The president called for the upholding of the law when it came to quarantine violators but in the same breath, made an exemption of a “good officer” who did the same thing during his “mañanita.”

Unsurprisingly, the capricious word play has left people confused, frustrated, and angry. Trust and confidence are eroded when white can be black tomorrow. There can be no peace of mind at a time when the heart needs it so. This haphazardness makes me so appreciative of our Father’s immutable and steadfast nature. If the unreliability of men can be frightening, can you just imagine how it is if the Creator of the universe was the same? One second we can be breathing normally then the next, he can choose to add one more O to the CO₂ with an exemption for a select few. Today, our names can be written in the Book of Life then tomorrow, it’s relabeled as the Book of Eternal Damnation. Or worse, seconds before we die, he could decide that we need to earn our salvation.

Thank You, Lord, that what You said yesterday holds true today and forevermore (1 Pet. 1:25, Isa. 40:8). The definition, wording, and application will always remain the same bringing the kind of peace that only You can. No one is more favored, no one is exempted. Thank You, Lord, that Your ways are not our ways. Thank You that Your Word is perfect.