It’s a privilege to be able to sit comfortably at home while in a crisis that the whole world is currently facing.  On the other end of the stick, there are those who can’t even stay at home because they have no home. Staying at home meant no income and no sufficient food supply for the family for the rest of the quarantine period.

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While it’s easy for us to stay indoors, especially when there’s a list of shows to binge-watch in a weeks under quarantine, with the fridge and cabinets stocked with food, the air conditioner on for the whole afternoon, and even if it rained, we wouldn’t have to worry cause of the stable and secured roof above our heads, not everybody has the same level of comfort.

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When the more privileged go out of their way to ridicule the suffering in the most condescending manner and broadcast it publicly to their followers on a broad social media platform, that’s when you can perfectly see how they’re detached from reality-that a large margin of the population is under poverty. The luxury to sit comfortably on a leather couch, let alone even sit comfortably is limited for everybody.

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COVID-19 chooses absolutely no one. Whether you’re poor or rich, anyone can be infected. Heck, Senator Zubiri was tested positive. Even Tom Hanks, his wife, and several NBA players were headlines as they were tested positive, too. Anyone could be a carrier and anyone can be infected, though the most vulnerable ones are the elderly, the youth, and the poor.

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There were two videos which greatly caught the public’s attention and ranked numbers on Twitter’s trending page. With the first one - girl with a camera filter, ranting with an obvious English-fluent tongue and the other was a middle-aged woman using foul language to refer to detain citizens who were caught outside. They may have different ways of expressing their sentiments but they both fall on a common denominator-the audacity to ridicule the already unfortunate.

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Another display of privilege was this one girl who spoke mindlessly in a thick American accent, and a woman calling withheld workers ‘f**kers’, filming the news portion on her beautifully-displayed flat-screen TV.

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I understand wholly that remaining indoors is a must but there’s also a need for people who chose to continue their small businesses in the middle of a crisis. So why not make use of your advantage to recognize the troubles faced by the underprivileged?

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We should be aware of the harsh reality that not everyone has the capacity to feel comfortable amidst the crisis. I hope that the people who are able to make thousands and thousands of pesos contribute something to help when a large margin of the Filipino population is on shackles just to live.