“IN every epoch, maybe noong una, Bubonic Plague, mga gago tao noon, tamang tama lang. Tapos ’yung Spanish Flu, right before the wars. Kawawa yung mga tao pero mas kawawa ’yung sa Middle East. The so-called Roman Empire. You have read the inquisition, kung may birth mark ka you are a witch and you’re burned at stake.”
Huh? Those words are from no less than President Duterte in a rambling speech on Monday where he placed the entire Philippines under public health emergency in response to the speed by which COVID-19 has crept into what he called “this f..king country.” This was hours after health authorities confirmed 10 new cases of COVID-19.
I am not going to dwell much on the value—or lack thereof—of his speech, but would like to point out its absurdity as a definite indication of the country’s ill-preparedness to contain the deadly outbreak. According to the Department of Health (DOH), as of Wednesday this week, the number of confirmed cases has risen to 33. The World Health Organization has announced that globally more than 4,000 people have died from the coronavirus, and over 113,000 cases have been confirmed.
For the country’s current situation, most health experts blame the government’s lackadaisical response to COVID-19 when it first broke out in February. They say that everything the government has done so far is delayed and not well-thought-out.
Afraid to ruffle the feathers of his beloved China, Duterte has initially refused to heed the advice of experts to close the country’s borders with those countries with known COVID-19 contamination. Only when the first death in the country was confirmed did the government finally accede. This, after more than 5,000 tourists from China, majority of whom are from Wuhan, had already freely roamed around the country’s beaches and malls.
Contrast this to what Italy did to contain the virus. The country placed its entire population of 60 million under quarantine in an effort to stem the outbreak that has thus far killed 631 people and affected more than 10,000.
The most telling case in the Philippines is that one of the victims who got infected in a prayer center in Greenhills, Mandaluyong City, has no record of travel to or from any of the countries flagged for COVID-19 contamination. This has raised fears that the virus is now stealthily jumping from one person to another. Health authorities are racing against time to account for all other people with whom this COVID-19 patient has been in contact with within the 14-day incubation period.
The task of contact tracing, already extremely difficult, is made even more taxing because the Department of Health (DOH) is operating on limited wherewithal. In the 2020 national budget of P4.1 trillion, the agency’s proposed P88-billion budget was decreased by P10.6 billion from its 2019 level. Note that aside from COVID-19, the country also faces a polio epidemic, as well as dengue and measles outbreaks that have claimed the lives of more than a thousand people, mostly children.
Worry not, according to the Palace, because the taxes taken from
Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator will shoulder the cost of combatting
COVID-19. This I find appalling because the President seems to be making a
pitch to make a hero out of POGO, the operations of which, according to
published reports, have spawned money laundering, prostitution and other
criminal activities mostly tolerated by different government agencies that have
direct supervision on this online gaming operations. And to think that a number
of these POGO operators have been accused of tax evasion by the Department of
Finance (DOF).
How low can this government go?
As it is, the virus has altered the way we live, and affected the area where it hurts the most: the national economy.
On Monday, P663 billion worth of wealth was cleaned out in the local stock market due to panic selling in relation to COVID-19. This was the local equities’ worst single-day bloodbath since the United States’s epic global financial crisis 12 years ago. Prices dove deeper into bearish territory. With unrelenting dumping of equities across global markets, the Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) shaved off 457.77 points or 6.76 percent to close at 6,312.61.
“Investors went into a selling frenzy, unloading everything they could as fears of a massive COVID-19 outbreak develop. This panic selling may continue till the end of the week,” said Christopher Mangun, head research of AAA equities.
Also, economic growth is expected to fall below the government’s 6.5-7.5 percent target for 2020 if the fallout from the COVID-19 disease stretches across the tourism and trade sectors until June, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).
Appearing before the Senate economic affairs committee, Neda Undersecretary Rosemarie G. Edillon said “that tourism’s gross domestic product growth could shed 0.5-1 percentage point [ppt] equivalent to P93 billion toP187 billion in foregone gross value added [GVA], such that GDP expansion could slow to 5.5-6.5 percent.”
Inbound tourist arrivals fell by 1.42 million as per Neda’s estimated economic impact of COVID-19. If the outbreak dawdled on until June, it would lead to 30,000 to 60,000 in job losses in the tourism sector alone. Among foreign tourists, the Chinese accounted for about 22 percent of arrivals, Edillon noted, although Neda’s estimates also considered the partial travel bans imposed on other affected areas.
Also, more than 300 workers of 19 tourism-related establishments have lost their jobs since February due to the coronavirus outbreak that has limited air travel, especially from China, one of the country’s biggest tourist markets, the Department of Labor and Employment said on Tuesday.
Philippine Airlines, the country’s largest airline, has shaved off around 300 employees from its administrative and management departments under a business restructuring scheme to “increase revenues and reduce costs.” PAL said the move came after ending 2019 in the red, which has been exacerbated by travel bans and flight revocations to areas affected by COVID-19.
COVID-19 has thus unmasked how those in power craft their own reality and believe their own truth.
For comments and suggestions, e-mail me at mvala.v@gmail.com
2 comments
Thank you for this excellent article.
You’re very much welcome and thanks for reading my column