Velez: Pandemic and lockdown news: week #7

SOCIOLOGIST, UP Professor and Inquirer columnist Michael Tan recently wrote this: “The (corona)virus is not smart, but it’s winning because people can be dumb, or dumbed down.” Let’s keep that in mind as we go through the news of the week.

Salvador Panelo, president’s legal counsel, suggests martial law should be implemented because “there is an actual invasion of the coronavirus disease.” Retired Justice Antonio Carpio simply laughed away upon hearing this statement.

The Philippine Army’s 402nd Brigade announced its ingenious way of helping in the information drive on Covid-19. They dropped 10,000 information leaflets and 2,000 face masks from their helicopter to the rural communities in Agusan del Norte and Sur provinces. We still have to get reports on how many carabaos and tree branches have read the leaflets and wore these face masks.

The question is, if martial law is implemented, how many bullets or checkpoints does it take to stop the virus from running amok?

Seriously, this highlights a comparative statistic. Our country has 305,000 soldiers and police force’ while we have 40,775 doctors, 90,308 nurses, and 13,400 medical technologists based on a 2018 review of the Philippine health care system done by former Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit. Six out of 10 Filipinos die without even seeing a doctor treating them. I imagine they saw a checkpoint in their town.

Sometimes you wonder, what if the government spends more to train more young people to hold a stethoscope or a test kit, rather than training more of them to hold guns. It’s a better world to see health frontliners saving lives rather than news of officers arresting the poor, or shooting a traumatized soldier.

We wonder what scenario the government is doing as it targets the lifting of the enhanced quarantine by next week at the earliest time. Have we flattened the curve? How ready or how safe are we?

The statistic point that we are heading to another disaster. Mass testing, a pre-requisite to lift the lockdown, has been going down, says Luz Rimban, director of the Ateneo de Manila Center for Journalism. Mass testing has been done by an average of 6,000 tests a day, far from the targeted 20,000.

Relief work is also behind as 6.4 million families have not received aid, while 11 million more are still on the waitlist.

“Is it possible ...that farthest from (government’s) mind is the well-being of all its citizens?” asks Rimban.

Ambot sa langaw pila edad sa ok-ok.