WE WILL SURVIVE

As we grapple with a global pandemic that has altered our reality, MEGA brings together some of the brightest stars and personalities in the country to help us gather our collective strength, unite ourselves in the spirit of empathy and stand against the threat of our lives

- TRINA EPILEPSIA BOUTAIN

This is unprecedented. The issue you are now holding in your hands (or reading on your screen) is divided into two halves. The first half: pre-quarantine, prestate of emergency, is a world where we groused about the terrible traffic, went on coffee runs with our colleagues, packed the city’s numerous shopping malls, obsessed about the latest It Bag and It Shoe and planned for the upcoming summer holidays. This reality makes up half of the bright and airy sections you have come across. They are filled with gloss and cheeky wonder.

And the second half? Well.

We are in the midst of a mandatory quarantine, the specter of the coronavirus seemingly in every handshake, in every doorknob and every look sent our way. Many of us are stuck in our homes, blocking out the rising panic by binging on mass entertainment and adjusting to a work from home setup while others fret about what is to come. And that’s just for the affluent among us. The less fortunate? Well, they have to deal with a reality that is far more grim than what they had before—as if it weren’t so dire already. There appears to be no good news, only bad, and it’s unceasing: of people clinging to life in overwhelmed hospitals, of world leaders struggling with an invisible enemy, of things breaking down—from global markets to communities. Today, the Philippines, us of the resilient people, used to catastrophes and tragedy, is now a society floating in a state of limbo, fearful of the worst and despairing that hope might just be a silly daydream.