Offensive & insulting

My wife and I just got “carded” twice in one week.

Before you transform into a grammar Nazi, allow me to explain for those unfamiliar with club or bar lingo. “Carded” refers to the experience of being stopped at the entrance of a bar or club or any facility that has age requirements and being asked to present your ID or proof of age. In the world of normal human beings, this requirement applies to minors that society wants to keep away from alcohol, tobacco, gambling and other forms of vice. It applies to people presumed too young to know what is good for them.

Not anymore. Not in the Philippines where lazy health and government officials simply lock people in their homes because they can’t be bothered to think and come up with categories and classifications for the movement of people. That is why Filipinos 65 years and above or 18 years and below have effectively been the prisoners of the state for one year under the fallacy and lie that it is for their sake. No, it is not.

In recent times and in my very recent personal experience I have actually been “carded” twice and asked to present an ID that proves I am below 65 years of age. The obvious trigger to this government imposed idiotic requirement is based purely on the amount of white hair that I have and refuse to dye. It is often an untrained 20-something-year-old employee who is tasked with this globally and culturally offensive assignment. Unfortunately they don’t know any better and their excuse is because the IATF, DTI and local government restricts people 65 and above from leaving their homes. On the first point regarding white hair, I have a 23-year-old “niece” who has a natural 2-inch wide streak of white hair on the top of her head; does that make her old? My wife who is a foreigner and who just turned 60 has a full head of gray/white hair so the young lady at the entrance of S&R in Lipa City stopped her, asked how old she was and if she could present an ID. To ask a lady regardless of nationality what her age is, is socially and culturally OFFENSIVE. To presume that she is 65 because of white hair is downright INSULTING.

As for the restriction on seniors 65 and above, Secretary Francisco Duque, who acts like an apostolate of the World Health Organization, often quotes the WHO as the author and authority that imposes the policy. If that is the case, why then is it that other countries don’t have such a specific, unconstitutional and probably illegal action? I’ve never heard or read any law recently passed by Congress that allows the violation of our constitutional right to travel or move about. President Duterte regularly states that the government cannot curtail the right of all Filipinos to travel or return home because the Constitution says so, but in their own country 50 percent of the population has currently been deprived of that right. There are laws that allow the government to detain criminals or suspects, but being 65 years or older is not a crime! Illegal detention is! As far as I have seen, governments around the world declare restrictions on the entire population and not on a select group or age category. Restrictions on movement are democratic and equitable and based on specific timelines and not on the will or paranoia of a government official.

If Duque wants to raise the facts and statistics of global deaths involving seniors as his defense and to justify the illegal detention of at least 2 million seniors, I will call it statistical and intellectual dishonesty from abroad where the great majority of seniors and elderly who died were largely living in retirement facilities or what we call homes for the aged, were already advanced in years ranging from 80 to 90 years of age and had comorbidities when they were infected in the equivalent of an incubator and killed by a disease that mankind was just beginning to notice but not yet understand during the first 3 to 6 months of the pandemic. Those who did not die in hospices and homes for the elderly died because of the standard protocols of treatment such as intubation and unintentional misdiagnosis as doctors worldwide desperately grappled and wrestled with the mystery that was COVID-19 in ICUs. Many of those seniors did not die because they were 65 years and above.

One year ago, developed societies challenged the use of masks, debated treatment options, debated on how the virus was transmitted, discovered that respirators spread the virus in confined spaces which led to infections of nurses and doctors. Duque himself counseled against a travel ban on China and look where we are now? The government brought home OFWs, and sent home LSIs or Locally Stranded Individuals and in both cases they did not do enough study and did not build up the necessary facilities and that rushed or rash decision was in itself a “Super Spreader” that also brought the UK and South African variant.

In recent times, policies against couples riding motorcycles together were deemed “illegal;” law enforcement officials with nothing better to do decided to join the insanity by prohibiting PDAs or Public Displays of Affection. The worst thing about such defective and discriminatory rules imposed by Duque and the IATF is that these have led to heated arguments, confusion and discord. We Filipinos are arguing, debating or fighting over rules and their interpretation. We are being insulted for our age, offended based on looks and deprived of liberty. Wake up folks and push back.

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