HOTSPOT
Doctors have been repeatedly asked about and have also been repeatedly giving their opinion about the coronavirus pandemic since March. Unfortunately, our leaders have depended on an entirely different set of advisers. The result of indifference to health care workers has been, to say the least, devastating to people’s lives and public health.
In the past few days and weeks, these health care workers in many fields of medicine and science have spoken for changes. Taking the lead, Philippine College of Physicians spoke to the public and wrote to the president about their serious concerns.
The independent group Second Opinion went further by raising the call for a Demilitarized Medical Quarantine, along with six action steps based on the health care system’s six pillars. Their statement calling for drastic changes has been gathering support from many health care workers fed up with staggering incompetence and the refusal or inability to put science and medicine on top of public health policy.
Ordinarily, it should be difficult for leaders to ignore doctors’ and HCWs’ advice, especially now that we are in a state of public health emergency and a pandemic. But the times aren’t exactly ordinary in Philippine politics at the moment. In the same way that facts seem to be challenged, science and medicine nowadays seem to be merely incidental to our authorities.
The official narrative has been to make coronavirus about people’s discipline or our lack thereof. Enforcing discipline has been the priority of government – lockdowns, checkpoints, deployment of police and military forces under the direction of IATF leaders who are retired military generals. There would honestly be less trouble for government had this narrative been accurate or the measures effective but they’re not. The GDP figures, as well as the DOH stats on coronavirus cases, belie the staggering incompetence of the government’s heavy handed response. Diehard believers are thus angry and disappointed.
If science and medicine were in the lead, we would be in a different place right now, and not dependent on China’s commitment to provide us vaccines. There would be quarantines allright, but these would be focused on disease control and prevention, with barangay health workers going house-to-house educating the public and identifying the vulnerable portions of the population. Scientists and medical experts would be presiding over mass testing, and setting up laboratories around our archipelago in order to find who are sick, so they could be isolated, and treated and contact-tracing done. They would have recommended the hiring of thousands of new health care workers, especially in the public hospitals where COVID-19 patients could be treated en masse.
Unfortunately, this has not been the case. Science and medicine have not been the lead factors in policies and laws recently enacted by government. Thus, we have the shutdown of the country’s biggest broadcaster and the enactment of the anti-terror law. There were high hopes that the trillions in new debt, and hundreds of billions in new appropriations would go to measures based on science and medicine, but the president said we no longer have money.
Up to now, the Philippines still has no plan for stimulating the economy after implementing the world’s longest lockdown. The government response has caused the closure of many businesses, and the loss of many jobs. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is down 16.5 percent. The many small and medium-scale businesses that have died can find no hope of resurrection as of the moment. They have no bailouts or economic assistance to pine for. Elsewhere in the world, governments have enacted massive stimulus packages and emergency aid to provide people a sense of economy is security as they battle the pandemic. Here in the Philippines, the mantra is “you’re on your own.”
Perhaps the best illustration of the government’s pandemic response is its treatment of public transportation, especially jeepneys. Jeepneys have been banned from the streets despite global consensus by health and scientific experts that public transport is essential amid a pandemic, and that well-ventilated public transport modes ought to be encouraged. Jeepneys are well-ventilated. With physical distancing and the wearing of masks, they could provide us essential service at this time. In place of science and health, the government apparently used the pandemic to sneak in its long-deprived fantasy of phasing out jeepneys.
If the government applied the strict “standards” it imposed on jeepneys, no other mode of public transportation could pass muster. The point-to-point buses, and the new e-jeepneys are enclosed and not well-ventilated. Even commercial planes wouldn’t be allowed to fly.
It is thus not surprising that the group Second Opinion this week said jeepneys should be back, citing scientific literature and statements from health authorities elsewhere. We can only hope the authorities would listen to them.
Many countries in the world have been able to control the spread of the disease by availing themselves of the solutions from science and medicine, and by prioritizing public health in word and in deed. They did not say that their people just had to wait for a Chinese vaccine. Neither did they impose martial law-like lockdowns. They also quickly enacted stimulus packages to save their economies from ruin. Doctors, scientists, and health care workers were on top of the situation.
Their presidents and prime ministers were not divas who addressed their public at midnight. They did not say gasoline was a disinfectant, and empathized with the sacrifices of their people. Ministers, police, and other officials who violate quarantines and public health measures were sacked. Citizens are encouraged to speak out and their respect and cooperation earned.
There’s still hope. For a country whose national hero is a doctor, we don’t have to look far for inspiration. Our HCWs have been offering their own lives to contain this pandemic. Who else can top that? When would our authorities heed their second opinion?
(Dedicated to FVA, a peacemaker, changemaker, counselor, and friend.)