MANILA, Philippines (The Adobo Chronicles, Manila Bureau) – Like most everyone else in the Philippines, the United States and many countries in the world, we at The Adobo Chronicles have also been quarantined, but for a very different kind of reason, a different virus that has hit us and hit us hard.  And it is very contagious.  No amount of handwashing, sanitizing,  social distancing or wearing of PPE will protect people, certainly not us.

Scientists have no name for it, but we’re calling it the Toxicity virus.

It’s very toxic and it manifests itself among politicians, the news media, social bloggers and among ordinary citizens.

Symptoms include:

• Politicians’ disregard for the safety of other people, despite very clear and specific rules that they ought to follow but choose to ignore under the guise of humanitarian reasons. In reality, their actions show some utter lack of brain cells.
• Speaking of the lack of brain cells, the virus also lingers among supposed leaders who have used crisis situations to self-promote their political ambitions while creating noise, being opposed to almost everything just for the sake of trying to be relevant and to survive their all but dead careers.
• Members of the news and social media trying hard to assume professions and roles that they don’t have any clues about — professions like lawyers, virologists, scientists, medical professionals, economists, statisticians.
• Doomsday-saying and rumor-mongering, evident in people who take pleasure in faking the news to sow fear in an already panicked population.
• Post-sharing of anything that comes across social media, regardless of the ridiculousness and stupidity of the content being shared.  Hell, the more clicks, the more likes, the more re-shares, the better – VIRAL in the true sense of the word.
• Over-eagerness, as manifested in the way rules are being enforced on the local level and down the chain of command. The desire to outdo rules already put in place on the national level. It is especially common among good-for-nothing, power-hungry, pseudo-leaders.
• The unintelligible urge to defend individual rights even if these rights trample on the greater good of the greater number of people.

Our staff at The Adobo Chronicles have all been tested for this Toxicity virus. We’re positive and we have imposed self-quarantine for all. Indefinitely.

We haven’t manifested any of the above symptoms but we’re devasted by them.

See you all on the other side.

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