When the President was heard recently making a remark on the use of face shield, the usual swarm went into full-throttle on social media with some speeding away from the pack disregarding the checkered flag of confirmation.
The experts and the mob of pseudo-experts including me were posting, reacting, sharing, and commenting. Over the frenzy, a familiar-sounding rhetorical question turned into a flashing exclamation like an EDSA billboard trying to amuse the still slow yet faster traffic, “To shield or not to shield!”
My quarantined mind jumped into a time portal and saw my late Pisay batchmate, Mario Taguiwalo, dramatically reciting in literature class Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, “To be, or not to be? That is the question—Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them?”
Mario wrote well (and) in high school. We were awed by his wit and humor. In the current topic of face shield my memories of him made me ponder half-seriously and half-playfully, “To shield or not to shield, that is the question!”
Hamlet was agonizing over life miseries and the option of death in the famous play of Shakespeare. We made a poor copy by crying out from our pandemic solitude to show our fear of death without the face shield practically condemning the face mask as unreliable.
CNN Philippines on June 17, among several, reported that the President put an end to the question of whether Filipinos should keep wearing face shields at all times and said that these should only be worn in hospitals. But in no time, the official spokesmen clarified there was no final decision yet.
Hamlet’s fatal flaw was his failure to act immediately to kill Claudius, his uncle and murderer of his father. His tragic flaw was procrastination. In parallel, we give up our role as Hamlet as we blame the government for the delays in acting against that which causes death in the pandemic. We let the public officials suffer the angst of scared people and watch them recite in chorus, “To shield or not to shield!”
It is said that Hamlet’s main strength is also his great weakness: He thinks before he acts. In this pandemic, on second thought, I would rather have the government act more like Hamlet no matter how impatient the public audience is. Hamlet eventually acceded to his father’s ghost and killed Claudius. So, too, will the government consent to the pleasure of the people at the right time.
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