Fernando: Society in the midst of Covid-19 pandemic

SO MUCH have changed in the society since the outbreak of the coronavirus now called Covid-19 by the World Health Organization (WHO) to lessen, hopefully, its stigma. The outbreak caught the world in utter surprise. If this is China's fault in not properly disseminating the real nature of the virus or the miscalculation or political motive of the WHO in not declaring it as a pandemic in the beginning to favor the Chinese is already a secondary issue. The main problem now is stopping its spread to stop or lessen the death toll. The number of death is by the way horrific and traumatic and society has never been this broken.

Quarantine and lockdown are two main strategic measures set up my numerous governments to combat the outbreak. There is no vaccine to totally capacitate the body against the infection and we are left with no effective measure but to get away with the virus. I have been following updates on the development of the vaccine. Although numerous laboratories are coming up with promising results, I know we still have to count months before its availability. Society has never experienced a more drastic change since the last world war.

If there is a monumental change society, it is the restriction of people's freedom. This restriction has changed the role of people in the society. The working class and student body are forced to stay in their homes and the implication falls on the heavy usage of social media. On March 24, Facebook announced that in many of the countries' most affected by the virus, total messaging has increased by more than 50%. Italy has seen a 70% increase in time users spend on social media since the crisis arrived (Hanson, 2020; Majewska, 2020). This sudden and swift change of roles of the people plus the exposure on social media contributing to their worries and panics, are reasons why mental health is seen as the next problem after the world contain and eliminate the outbreak.

I like to think that our government no longer exercise the balance of power anymore. This is an international emergency and because of the exigency of the situation, emergency power was granted to the president giving him power to dictate measures to address the pandemic without the permission of the congress or the intervention of the judiciary. The president is giving the police and military along with the local government units never before seen administrative power since the martial law days in imposing national directives.

Society is not normally functioning but few are complaining of it because of the gravity of the plague. Majority of us are trying to embrace the responsibility of staying home and this is challenging in its very essence. Democracy is obviously curtailed but the situation I think asks for it. Decisions are mostly coming from the executive branch, not from the legislative. Protesters in the country, many of them, are not remonstrating on the reduction of their liberty for the sake of liberty per se but for the denial of their basic right to food.

Poor countries like ours are prone to the collapse of various institutions because of our lack of capacity to supply the basic necessities of the people. There are lots of problems in the selection and distribution of relief goods and financial assistance. Poor people in the country especially those in the rural areas who have no access to social media to voice out their complaints are not provided sufficient food supplies. The middle class is asking for financial aid as well. If the government cannot feed them all, there is a tendency that they will go to the streets even with the presence of the police and military personnel. Thanks to World Bank for granting us a hefty loan. It could save us for a month or two. Should the government fail in sustaining the needs of the people while lockdown still ensues, we should face chaos in the near future.

The good thing right now is that most Filipinos trust the government. There are oppositions but these are overwhelmed by supporters of the administration. We only hope that these difficult days will be over in a couple of weeks. We cannot bear another couple of months, we will definitely run out of supplies unless we will be granted another loan from the WB or from our friends (don't know which country are our friends anymore). But until there is trust in our government, we will overcome the problem in our society.

Trending

No stories found.

Just in

No stories found.

Branded Content

No stories found.
SunStar Publishing Inc.
www.sunstar.com.ph