Month: March 2020

public health

Thinking about the virus #Covid19

March 22, 2020 by
T

by Orlando Roncesvalles

The virus has us all riveted to our seats, watching the news, helplessly wondering what will happen next. Will we be “shut in” forcibly, as in China? Will we be more like Italy and Spain with draconian measures to keep almost all at home, not so much by force but by community efforts? Can we have something less drastic like Korea, where there is no lockdown but massive testing allows for infected people to be isolated early in the course of the epidemic. The answers are not easily found.

A thought experiment may point to how we might go about finding a reasonable approach. Suppose there were only two persons in an economy, and we cannot tell who is infected. But for sure, one of them is sick. If both go out and work, all get infected. Both die. And we have no more economy. This is the scenario if we did nothing at all to confront the virus.

If we don’t test, we can lockdown all at home, as we do now for Luzon. That effectively shuts down the economy. But at least the economy revives when a vaccine or cure is found. This means that lockdown is better than doing nothing. Lockdown at least keeps half the population alive while we wait for a vaccine or cure. Doing nothing is something like suicide, irreversible, or worse, a form of homicide.

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governance, public health

Grounding Government: Why Criticize Now During COVID-19?

March 18, 2020 by
G

I believe in government. Governments sprouted side-by-side with civilization to create order, as did belief, religion, and the study of natural sciences. The first “government officials” were those who displayed qualities of being ahead, for example, hunters of extraordinary prowess, priests, shamans, or those supposedly ordained by a god—pharaohs, emperors, prophets, etc. Ultimately, governments arose out of our need to make sense of life: social life had to lead somewhere, hopefully to a better end, or else, what’s the point of living with one another?

Government—coming in various forms—is human life’s answer to that. It is essentially an idea that a group of people, a “nationality” (an idea that sprouted much later), agrees upon and pools their time and resources (i.e. taxes) into so that, as a big(ger) group, they are able to surmise solutions to problems they could not solve as mere individuals. Simply put, big problems require big solutions.

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public health

Duterte’s iron fist no match for Covid-19

March 15, 2020 by
D

It’s 44 days after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the country and day one of the Duterte administration’s community quarantine-cum-lockdown of Metro Manila. There is much more anxiety, fear and panic than there should be.

The coronavirus threat is real and it’s critical for the government to respond quickly and decisively. Everyone also has a responsibility to support every measure to stop the spread of the virus.

But what if the government’s response is muddled and, worse, ill-conceived? Do we, as the president said, “just follow” because it’s for our own good? Follow, and keep silent?

There are fortunately more than enough Filipinos who are neither blindly adoring of Pres. Duterte nor crave subjugation. Speaking up from outside government and especially within it, they are the best chance to get the Duterte administration to reconsider its militarist approach to addressing the COVID-19 pandemic.

And there should be no doubt that the response is certainly militarist.

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public health, social / media

#COVID19: Handling a health crisis in the time of Duterte

March 7, 2020 by
#

Here’s something that’s become clearer now: Duterte’s rhetoric—that one that’s been sold as a personality quirk, that cracks inappropriate jokes, that same one that shifts towards violence every chance it gets, that dismisses important issues by saying it’s fake news, that evades critical demands of nation by delivering empty soundbites and/or talking about the drug war over and over again, or his perceived enemies like media and America—this Duterte rhetoric is government’s communications policy.

Sure, it might not be written anywhere, but it is the rhetoric that Duterte’s men and women have used, especially when faced with questions from a populace now unable to contain its dismay and disgust. Keeping us preoccupied with soundbites also means we lose precious time for piecing together the parts of the various crises we face.

We see this strategy being used for the COVID19 crisis.

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civil society

Reasons To Keep Walking Down EDSA

March 3, 2020 by
R

Saan ba dapat lumugar kapag hindi ka dilawan at tutol ka rin sa pagiging abusado ng estado? Today, the Philippine Daily Inquirer talked about a divided nation but I don’t think I agree with the dividing line–or at least, I have reservations. Being “yellow” and “pro-Duterte” are just some aspects of being Filipino and if the nation is divided as such then I’m afraid the limit of our political imagination is so narrow and obtuse, with our lenses unable to see the whole beyond these very noisy parts. I did not go to EDSA because I worship the yellows. I went because I read history and I understand the meaning of the 1986 People Power Revolution to us as a nation–despite being born two years after the fact. Yes, it was a fact.

So many people from my parent’s generation have tried to convince me to let this shit go. EDSA, in their view, was a failure because nothing’s changed blah blah blah and it was only about the elite’s blah blah blah. Every time I hear this being told to me, I bite my tongue in exasperation, hoping the topic would naturally switch so I won’t have to be my parent’s rude child. But as of late, the historical revisionism rife in their tirades has forced me to be a bit more vocal and aggressive.

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