Keeping Duterte COVID-free - You can see him but you can't touch him

He may not share the same taste in rap, pop nor hip hop with the star who at birth was Christened Stanley Kirk Burrel but certainly occupy the same need for exclusive territory.

Like Queen Elizabeth, he mightily deserves his own purple corridor – not for the royal flight to take off unmolested; but so he is not exposed to germs, bacteria and – that dastardly corona virus!

To his detractors, it is firmly established that ‘Digong’ Duterte is UNSPEAKABLY lacking in social airs – certainly not the requisite graces when it comes to spitting out bile on inanimate objects that cannot bite back. (Some describe him with the potential to be more uncouth and poisonously venal when the tirade is aimed at former-CNN journalists).

He is famously known for calling a spade a spade and make known his own views on matters social, moral and political in as coarse a language as only a Duterte mix of Tagalog and Pinglish (Pinoy English) can.

He is also not above spitting out guttural sounds requiring compression of his – considerable belly, through gritted teeth and pursed lips.

In a fit of puerile anger recently, the 16th President of the Phillipines famously offered to empty his bladder at the rim of the Taal volcano which erupted causing great devastation in the island of Luzon in mid-January.

Ever ready to prove his indomitable prowess, Duterte also offered to eat the Taal volcanic ashfall as if peeing and then ingesting the slush would quieten the rumbling mountain if not tame it completely.

If his uncouth intentions on Taal were UNSPEAKABLE, now with the threat of COVID-19, Duterte is UNTOUCHABLE! Cue MC Hammer!

The threat of the President himself catching the novel flu virus is being taken seriously as he keeps up his punishing pace of engagements throughout the island.

At age 74 and suffering from a variety of ailments requiring him to pop some really potent pills, COVID-19 is a real and present danger to the 16th President of the Philippines.

His handlers have now given fair warning to anyone wanting to `press his flesh’ at public appearances. This is social distancing at right up there at Pinoy Presidential pinnacle.

Apparently shaking hands, physical embrace, and what more – the men peck on the cheeks which Digong should perhaps ban for being an affront to Mindanao machismo is now a NO NO when Digong is making an official appearance.

His security detail now has a new role – to mount a cordon sanitaire around the President so he does not catch any lurking novel corona!