Downbeat, upbeat
CLASH OF VIEWS. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the US’s top infectious disease expert, and Dr. Robert R. Redfield , director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, facing a Senate panel Tuesday, May 12 were as downbeat as President Trump has been upbeat about America’s reopening.
Fauci said that if the Americans wouldn’t respond “adequately,” there would be more infections and the US would face the risk of a “resurgence.” The day before the hearing, Trump declared victory over coronavirus: “We have met the moment and we have prevailed.”
Zoom to the Philippines, where views of the president and the health experts do not clash, not on stage, where the President rarely talks like an epidemiologist, and the health experts are often unheard from. The word of the national government comes from the Inter-agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) through its publicist, Presidential Spokesman Harry Roque.
Fauci is considered a superstar of sort these days and shines more brightly than Trump who often lies brazenly and whose most memorable medical advice is to consider bleach as an internal disinfectant to kill the intruder virus.
We have Villa, Bernadas
MESSAGING PROBLEM. We don’t have a Fauci or a Redfield. In Manila, Department of Health Secretary Francisco Duque has virtually lost his voice and stayed away from the cameras. The IATF publicist has been benched and Harry Roque also speaks for the task force. One voice, centralized and not contradictory but the health experts are scarcely heard or seen.
Locally, we’ve been spotting in the news media Dr. Daisy S. Villa, Cebu City health officer, and Dr. Jaime S. Bernadas, regional health director. But they’re only occasionally exposed to the public. In those instances, Villa’s messages were garbled and caused controversy. And Bernadas didn’t have much time to explain enough how rapid diagnostic tests would be good for people individually and as a community and the protocol on testing, tracing and treating infected persons.
And local public officials talking to their constituents have spent more time on statistics and the problems of enforcing the quarantine than on the process and its reason, which might have made people less wary about testing and being extracted from their home and family if found positive.
Metaphors on normalizing
US CHECKPOINTS, OUR ZONES AND ‘DAHAN-DAHAN.’ In calling for caution while lifting the restrictions in the US, Dr. Fauci calls the conditions “checkpoints,” which must be passed, the condition on progress of infections met. Trump, it seems, would not be bothered by checkpoints. A state can bypass them if it wants to, or so the US president would want America’s reopening to be.
How about us? If publicist Harry Roque were to be believed, the Philippine approach to lifting the lockdown or resuming business is “unti-unti” (little by little) and “dahan-dahan” or “hinayhinay lang” (slowly). Roque must know “hinayhinay lang” is a favorite Bisaya expression, which has become part of the Tagalog prose.
What is our version of the US checkpoints? The IATF offers “zones”: critical zone, containment zone, buffer zone and outside the buffer zone. The delineation of areas also defines the places where there are still lockdown restrictions and where they are removed or lessened for re-opening of specified businesses and movement of people and things.