Some seniors, by law those 60 years old and above, have raised a board in social media, arguing for protection, not isolation during the pandemic coronavirus which has infected thousands and killed hundreds in the Philippines.“Do not shackle the healthy seniors,” goes their first line of argument, adding the object of government policies should be “ensuring protection and ease of living and mobility, not restriction and isolation.”Their beef is there are still many—though figures were not raised for immediate appreciation by both sides—who are gainfully employed and physically fit..

They have also raised the line the assumption of “heath vulnerability” by the Department of Health “is not based on conclusive study and research, and at best a cautionary assumption.”Their line, of course, is in and by itself an assumption, and an assumption without proof is an assumption denied.On the other hand, the DOH, resting on research by medical experts and practitioners from the Geneva-based World Health Organization, including epidemiologists and microbiologists, have said, repeatedly, that older people are at high risk in contracting COVID-19 which have infected at least more than 8,000 and killed nearly 600 in the Philippines—and the numbers are still rising.This is not agreeing they are the only ones at high risk, since younger people have been included in the horrifying statistics on infections and deaths.

But it seems some seniors, if in fact gainfully employed, have glossed over the reality that their offices are closed–or if essential services were on stream they could work off site or work from home but intentionally concealed in their argument.Medical experts—not the seniors eager to go out for a short-sighted definition of mobility—have underlined that older people have weaker lungs, making them an easy target for the virus which has clawed into the world’s population.And the elderly are higher likely to suffer from chronic inflammation which, in experts’ views we endorse, undermines the body’s ability to quickly respond to the virus.Certainly the quarantine is not house arrest, which presupposes a crime, as some with jejune mental frames have described it.The crime would be to allow unnecessary movements and let the healthy and working seniors infect, or be infected unnecessarily—when the government and health authorities can protect them for the greater good.