Tag: COVID19

governance, public health

Notes on: What next? #Covid19 #TerrorLaw #Protest

July 19, 2020 by
N

We all already agree that the Duterte government’s handling of this public health crisis is probably one of the worst in the world—and certainly the worst in Southeast Asia—as both the facts and numbers reveal.

But this government is much much worse. It has used this pandemic and to declare de facto martial law. The policies on the Bayanihan We Heal As One Act are the tip of the iceberg; what is worse than the words that are there is how it is implemented on the ground, where military might and police power are king. We of course had this coming: we watched the past four years as Duterte appointed military men into the Cabinet, one after the other; we watched as he emboldened the police by telling them to kill, and condoning their abuses; we watched as he jailed Leila de Lima, unseated CJ Sereno, jailed activists on trumped-up charges; we watched as the body count grew.

This pandemic was all Duterte’s government needed to get all its other unjust, extrajudicial policies to happen. Cancel the ABS-CBN franchise based on the President’s personal gripe? Check. Pass the anti-terror law that will legalize the tagging of activism as terrorism among the violation of our rights? Check. Put Charter Change back on the table? Check. Allow the Aerotropolis airport in Bulacan to push through despite displacing fisherfolk and it environmental repercussions? Implement the jeepney phaseout that will disenfranchise thousands of jeepney drivers who are being made to go into debt for a modern vehicle in this time of crisis? Check. Disallow protests, and arrest without warrants any group, no matter how small, that dares do a protest? Check.

The latter is of course key: the past five months, we have seen how incompetent and violent, how shameless and thoughtless this government is. At any other time we would be out on the streets, raising a fist. In the time of pandemic, we are disallowed from doing so, and with a Terror Law now in place, acts of resistance like that can easily be construed as acts of terrorism. The fear is valid, but so is the anger.

Especially since it get worse. Duterte’s propaganda machinery is so head of us, with it’s game so strong, that it has been able to control the narrative of this pandemic and the government’s contingent abuses.

Click here for the rest of it.

governance, public health

Ask FASSSTER

May 2, 2020 by
A

There are truths, there are lies, and there are statistics.”

The fate of 109 million Filipinos hangs, apparently, on nothing more than an econometric Lego set.

There is a model developed by the DOH, the Dept. of Science and Technology, Ateneo de Manila and UP called Feasibility Analysis of Syndrome Surveillance using Temporal  Epidemiological Modeler for Early Detection of Disease or  FASSSTER. The model is an “evidence based” predictor of COVID under varying assumptions. I understand it is the basis by which the Government decides whether to impose a quarantine, enhance it or modify it. Below is the April 20 iteration of FASSSTER. I am told it was part of an IATF presentation.

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disinformation and propaganda, social / media

How Duterte’s addresses to nation are sneaky political communications strategy

April 24, 2020 by
H

by Jayson Gaspar Maulit

Duterte appears on TV late at night <today at 8:00AM — ed.>, recently with Cabinet members providing insights and praising him. These are all taped-as-live, edited by people from RTVM/PCOO. Nakakairita, but what Malacañang does is a well-crafted and executed communications plan.

The national situation is important to the Palace, kasi for the first time in almost 4 years, tinamaan lahat ng krisis. EJKs, the Rice Tariffication Law, and puppeteering in the government didn’t concern the rich. China’s claiming of our islands seemed very far to the urban poor, and people who didn’t live in coastal areas. Misogyny? Racism? Bigotry? At least totoong tao si Digong, hindi kagaya ni Mar Roxas at ng mga Dilawan.

But the COVID-19 crisis? Tinamaan ang mga mahihirap, tinamaan ang mga estudyante, tinamaan ang middle class, at tinamaan ang mga oligarchs ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

So. Duterte addressing the nation. The timeslot is deliberate—meant to play with the media, avoid (close to) real-time criticisms from experts, and extend news cycles for maximum retention. The message? It’s not for us angry and frustrated citizens looking for answers, no. The addresses are loyalty checks and call for solidarity to the DDS, asking them to, again, band together.

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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

The body count #Covid19

April 6, 2020 by
T

“There are truths, there are lies, and there are statistics”

My driver, JanJan, is desperate.

JanJan is married with a 9 month old child. He supports his wife and his recently widowed mother. They live in Laguna. He works in Makati and commutes every weekend to his home.

When the ECQ was imposed in mid-March I asked JanJan to return to Laguna until the end of the lockdown. I called him yesterday to find out how he was and how I can send him money. JanJan told me he is unable to leave his small Barangay to go to Sta. Cruz, the nearest community with a remittance center. He cannot buy food because all sari-saris, groceries and market have closed. He goes direct to farmers for whatever food they have to sell. There is nothing for his child.

JanJan’s plight is replicated by millions all over this country. Yet even as Government officials talk of the billions now available for the poor there is no mechanism to recognize and identify the so called “poor”. They are the faceless victims of a crisis that our decision makers and armchair pundits like myself pay token attention to; buried in the statistics, the political rhetoric and empty expressions of concern.

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