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public health, social / media

Navigating Through This Crisis: The Personal in Mass Testing #Covid19

April 11, 2020 by
N

My five siblings and I, including my two in-laws, keep a Viber group where we often exchange memes, artworks, and videos of our nieces, and in times like these, positions about things political and seemingly otherwise. I’m putting it lightly, considering that you can plot the eight of us neatly on a Cartesian plane and no two dots would be on the exact same point, no standpoint ever being in full agreement with another. There’s always a branching out, a curve, or a tone that each one of us bends the discussion to, as I presume it is in every family, rooted mostly in the different paths we have taken or are taking. Imagine, eight people stuck with each other with roughly 250 years of life between them.

Over the last weeks of March and the dawn of these lockdowns, the arguing was mostly between my older sister and I. She was (still is) at the frontlines in this COVID crisis and she hadn’t gone home to her husband and two daughters in more than two weeks, serving as one of the emergency room doctors in one of the leading private hospitals in Metro Manila. She was resolutely not in agreement with mass testing. On the left corner, I had been entertaining the thought of mass testing as the next, logical step we could take—led by government, of course—upon reading the World Health Organization’s (WHO) campaign for it and the supposed success it heralded in South Korea and other countries. The #MassTestingNow bloc was also the only pointed segment in civil society that was visible and moving.

I was taken by my political affinities when I campaigned, albeit briefly, on Twitter for #MassTestingNow. My sister, who is seldom online, saw it and immediately brought me to court in our Viber group, asking me what I thought it meant. I replied with what I thought mass testing entailed, optimistically citing the cases of South Korea and Wuhan, as talked about in an article by the New York Times, and the best-case scenario recommended by the WHO. I did not forget to include the statement prepared by a group called Scientists Unite Against COVID-19 which defines itself as a group of “concerned scientists, organizations and other citizens,” though there are no specific signatories in the statement.

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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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social / media

Media Madness on 2020’s First Month

February 1, 2020 by
M

Newsflash: Too many people felt that January was too long and that there was nothing new with the New Year. Many are petitioning for a restart of 2020 to this month, jokingly, of course, though they are not entirely silly, and their intentions are well-meaning. 2020 was supposed to be “the year of clarity” but its first 31 days was chaos, to say the least.

A quick rundown of the events which took place last month:

The assassination of Maj. General Qasem Soleimani, a “misfire” that caused a plane to crash, and the US, under Trump, almost declaring war with Iran; the massive bushfires in Australia, burning for the past six months, finally gaining global attention; the Taal Volcano suddenly steaming ash over parts of Luzon and the “imminent threat” of a magmatic eruption looming for weeks; in showbiz, a long-time loveteam denying an alleged break up, eventually breaking up for real, and the rumors that made a mess in between; the coronavirus, the scares and the helpless spectating as the President issued hardly a word, just as he did during the Taal crisis; and to close the month, less than 24 hours after LeBron James overtook his scoring record, basketball legend Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others died in a helicopter crash on their way to Mamba Acadamy in Thousand Oaks, California. Lest I be accused of not giving airtime to how government responded to this month of crisis, let’s not forget Little Teddy Boy Locsin Jr. going full on WWE kayfabe right outside his office, the President being petty about Senator Bato’s visa cancellation, and the administration launching “The Duterte Legacy”—sheesh.

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