Deadly incompetence is the red line
On March 28, the Department of Health’s daily COVID-19 report recorded 9,475 new cases, 11 new deaths, a total of 105,568 active cases—and a 72-percent use rate of ICU beds in Metro Manila, the pandemic’s worst-hit region. The national government reluctantly ordered a return to enhanced community quarantine status for the region plus the neighboring provinces of Cavite, Laguna, Bulacan, and Rizal.
On April 11, the DOH daily report recorded 11,681 new cases, 201 new deaths, a total of 146,519 active cases—and an 86-percent use rate of ICU beds in Metro Manila. On the same day, the national government ordered a LOWERING of the status of “NCR Plus” to modified enhanced community quarantine.
As people on social media say these days: Make it make sense!
Perhaps the daily report is, because it is only a snapshot in time, misleading?
Let’s compare the week before March 28, then, with the week before April 11—using the number of new cases recorded as the unit of comparison.
From March 21 to 27, new cases were at an elevated level: 7,757 on March 21; 8,019 on March 22; 5,867 on March 23; the infamous figure of 6,666 on March 24; 8,773 new cases on March 25; 9,838 on March 26; and lastly, 9,595 on March 27.
That, together with other worsening numbers, sufficiently alarmed the national government to force it, against the advice of its economic managers, to raise the quarantine status of NCR Plus to ECQ.
But from April 4 to 10, the number of new cases was at even higher levels: 11,028 on Sunday; 8,355 on Monday; 9,373 on Tuesday; 6,414 new cases on Wednesday; 9,216 on Thursday; 12,225 on Friday; and 12,674 (the second highest ever recorded) on Saturday.
Or compare the number of deaths, the almost steady rise of which has completely alarmed even the well-to-do and the affluent. In the seven days between March 21 and March 27, a total of 230 deaths was recorded. That helped force the national government to impose a new ECQ on NCR Plus on March 28. But in the seven days between April 4 and April 10, a total of 1,322 deaths (almost six times as many) was recorded. But that staggering, demoralizing number did not stop the national government from lowering the quarantine status in NCR Plus on April 11. Again: Make it make sense!
The language of “trade-offs” is used as rationalization, but it is incorrect, or at least misleading. The national government did not use the latest ECQ and the (less expansive than expected) breathing room created to fix the deeper problems of the government’s pandemic response. In the last two weeks, the national government DID NOT ramp up a large but targeted testing program for the widening pool of people at risk of infection for COVID-19 in NCR Plus; DID NOT promote the inter-operability of existing contact tracing applications and accelerate the rollout of a unified contract tracing campaign; DID NOT invest in PPE and additional pay for beleaguered medical frontliners; DID NOT increase direct cash subsidies for the affected; DID NOT hasten the purchase and distribution of proven vaccines.
The only real improvement was the reclassification of some 3,200 hospital beds in NCR Plus for COVID-19 cases; of this total, only 110 (the beds in the “modular hospital” at the Quezon Institute) were newly constructed.
We deserve better. The principal reason the national government’s pandemic response has been so ineffective, so callous, so listless, is the leader of the national government is—let’s call a spade a goddamned shovel—ineffective, callous, listless.
In the last two weeks, the President of the Philippines was literally missing. In his stead, his personal aide Sen. Bong Go foisted suspicious photos and video clips on the public; it was, yet again, another moment in the Duterte presidency when proof of life was needed because the President was nowhere to be found. But instead of proof of life (many people remarked on the President’s different hairlines, for instance, which seemingly varied from day to day), Go’s manufactured images instead provided clear proof that—in the worst two weeks of the 14-month-long pandemic—the President was supposedly jogging, apparently golfing, actually breaking curfew. In other words: useless.
This deadly lack of basic competence is what’s killing the citizenry AND the economy. We need the business community, the schools, the various civic organizations, the professional societies, the retired generals, the former government officials, the lawyers, the Catholic bishops, the Cabinet secretaries with a greater loyalty to the people, to add their voice to the health sector’s real appeal: New leadership.
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