Before the MCO

It was in February, near the end of my Chinese New Year week. I was in outstation at the time. Who doesn't know about to CORONA VIRUS. It has been around since late 2019. At that time, I was doing a three month ortho-in house course. No writing, no going out for fun. Everyday I was hitting the books and trying to remember all about the bones, muscles and diseases (Who knew just a single bone you got to talk so many things about it?). Fast forward to January, I sat for the final exam, did okay for theory, struggled in OSCE, but managed to pass. Oh joy.

As I mentioned before it was near the end of my break, and my phone has been buzzing like crazy from my workplace. They were saying that soon we are going to be in a lockdown. At that time, China has already closed off all borders. No one can get in, no one can get out. Flights has been cancelled. Workplaces and shops (except for the essential business like healthcare, grocery, pharmacy, food (only for takeout)) are forced to close to contain the virus. It's already starting to impact our side. That's when the government had said we will be going into the MOVEMENT CONTROL ORDER. Kind of like a lockdown, but it's not. We can still go out but only limiting to one person to get essentials, and for people like us (Frontliners, certain food hawkers, grocery workers, pharmacists), we can still go to work, but we need to wear masks and the one important thing everyone will tell you: WASH YOUR HANDS!!!

Due to the sudden shortage of masks and hand sanitizers, please make sure to keep your department's stock sufficient. We have received complaints of people taking our hand sanitizers and masks... 

I predicted that it would happen. My family scoffed when I said that. "No one would take those. Don't be so negative." Sorry folks, when things goes down, they go down for real.

I came back to work to find it like a warzone (figuratively). We have people coming up to us demanding for masks and hand sanitizers. Their reasoning...I'll list it out here for you. I kid you not.

• "There's no more stocks out there. "
• "Hospitals are filthy rich. You should have plenty of stocks in your store." <== Most common 
• "I need to protect myself. You should supply me several."
• "Do you want me to die from the virus?"
• "Come on, I just want one. Just one..."  
• "I NEED IT..."

At that time, we had a sudden shortage of supply. No hand sanitizers, not a big issue, we still have the old water and soap combo (Also my preferred method. Hand sanitizers sometimes makes my fingers blisters, but depending on the situation, if you have no time to run for the sink, just a quick squirt of hand sanitizer will do, but still, WASH YOUR HANDS WITH WATER AND SOAP) but masks were a huge dilemma at that time. All of us have to share a box (Doctors, nurses, clinical assistants etc) so it means we have to use it efficiently. Once in a blue moon, you'll get someone coming in with a broken mask (unfortunate, but we'll help where we can)

Anyway, when you tell people that you have no supply, you know what happens? We get called names. Really. It ranges from SELFISH and DEVILS, and those are the most mild ones. We haven't even gotten to the worst name calling yet which involves a lot of cussing and complaints ("I'm telling everyone your service is terrible! No masks!!!" "I'll rate you one star, stupid service!!!") I swear, after working in healthcare for so long, I never knew how people can just be so plain...mean. (Of course I had my fair shared of troubles, but this is out of my control)

As expected, business dropped rock bottom. Not just us, but everyone. The whole economy went plummeting. The only people who came were really bad cases, like appendicitis, unable to go to the washroom, bleeding, cardiac arrest, trauma cases, but even then most of them ran to emergency. My side are mainly post-op cases and uro cases, people who were due to change their catheters. 

So as I said, my side, we're not so busy, but government hospitals was like a warzone, because they were taking all of these cases, and because it's affordable. I myself had went to government sometimes for certain things because as mentioned, cheap and affordable. With the MCO looming upon us, I'm going to have to save every money I got in case of emergencies. 

All in all, not that much exciting. I'll try to put up the next entry soon. I got the ideas whirling in my head, but I'm also juggling several projects, not to mention my most important job.