Dancing with COVID
The head of the government’s economic team, Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, is looking a bit exasperated these days. At a virtual press briefing last Wednesday, Dominguez noted a common thread of pessimism in the interview questions.
While acknowledging the gravity of this “black swan” once-in-a-century pandemic, Dominguez prefers to see the economic fallout as a “hiccup” and “a bad spot” from which the Philippines, with its strong macroeconomic fundamentals, can recover.
Dominguez refuses to give in to pessimism. “We will overcome this crisis,” Dominguez said. “We will get back to work. We will get back our economy.”
Other economic managers had a similar can-do message, among them Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Benjamin Diokno and acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Chua. Public Works Secretary Mark Villar promised that the government would forge ahead with Build Build Build. BBB in fact is seen to play a critical role in job generation and economic pump priming amid the pandemic.
“We will still deliver what is intended,” Villar said in his closing remarks. “We will just have to work twice as hard.”
Chua, for his part, pointed out that “we have a record of turning crisis into an opportunity.” He cited the reforms implemented, which led to stronger macroeconomic fundamentals, following the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s and the recession from 2007 to 2009.
From just 25 percent of economic activities allowed at the start of the enhanced community quarantine, the economy is now up to 75 percent opened up, Chua noted. So are you convinced yet that better times lie ahead?
* * * Perhaps we can look at it this way: when you’ve hit rock bottom, there’s no other way to go but up.
This, of course, presumes that we’ve already hit the bottom. Economically, with the reopening of an increasing number of activities, we could revive consumption and soften economic contraction.
Dominguez said consumption accounts for 70 to 75 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
Stimulating consumption, however, depends on people’s perception of the health situation. Until a vaccine or cure is out in the market, infection fears will likely continue to dampen consumption.
Two worrisome health issues have cropped up in recent days. One is the spike in COVID cases, and the acknowledgment by the Department of Health that the increase is now being driven not by belated reporting but by community transmission.
Another is the acknowledgment by the World Health Organization of “emerging evidence” of airborne transmission of the COVID-causing SARS-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), as 239 scientists in 32 countries insist – although there is still no definitive study on this.
I still think that if SARS-CoV-2 is airborne in the scariest sense of the word, the gated villages around the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine in Alabang, Muntinlupa would now be COVID hotspots.
Still, these two developments could intensify the belief that it’s better to be safe than sorry. This is great for public health, but it can be bad news for certain businesses that are struggling to get back on their feet.
* * * This weekend, for example, I will do something for the first time in my life: I will cut my own hair. I’ve watched several DIY video tutorials on the internet.
The hair and nail salon where I went regularly prepandemic, whose spacious premises were almost always full of customers, has not reopened, despite the green light from the government when Metro Manila was placed under general community quarantine.
There are many other hair salons that have reopened, but it will take time before I will risk entering one – even if the employees are covered from head to toe with personal protective equipment and all other health safety protocols are in place.
Yesterday there was at least one piece of good news: the US Environmental Protection Agency has approved (based on laboratory testing) the first two products that can kill SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces. The EPA said Lysol Disinfectant Spray and Lysol Disinfectant Max Cover Mist should remain on the surface for at least two minutes and the surface must appear wet.
Today the government may have to impose a quantitative limit on the number of Lysol cans that can be bought per customer – if there are any still left on supermarket shelves. As of yesterday afternoon, the Max Cover Mist was already out of stock on a popular ecommerce site. Think about it: finally, a lab-tested coronavirus killer! Lysol products aren’t cheap; the Max Mist is particularly expensive. Regular disinfection will add to the operational costs of salons and other business establishments. But if I see a salon smothered with Lysol disinfectant, I might be persuaded to finally get a professional haircut.
This development might also persuade people to return to dine-in establishments.
* * * Presidential spokesman Harry Roque advised people to “dance” or sumayaw with the coronavirus. He was referring to the metaphor for the COVID response that has gone viral, put forward by Tomas Pueyo, the San Francisco author of the explainer article “The Hammer and the Dance” that was posted on “Medium.”
“The hardest in terms of the economy is the hammer,” declared Pueyo, who works for an online education tech company. “But the hardest to pull off is the dance.” Why call it the dance? “Because it is a much more fluid phase,” he explained. “You might have outbreaks, so you need to react to that. It’s much more technical, too.”
The dance, he explained, includes COVID testing and contact tracing while adhering to health safety protocols such as wearing masks and physical distancing. If there is a resurgence of infections, “the hammer” could come back down any time.
“You need to know the steps of the dance and really apply them as if it were choreography,” Pueyo explained.
For all countries, knowing the steps is the tricky part. And different countries might design different steps.
“What I will say is life will never go back to what people have in mind as normal,” Pueyo said. “Once you change your habits as a society for months, it is likely that many of these habits will remain afterwards, so the world we knew until February 2020 is gone.”
The world as we knew it pre-pandemic might be gone, but we can emerge better from this crisis. Remember the admonition: what doesn’t kill us should make us stronger.