HOTSPOT
Tonyo Cruz
It has been months since the administration declared a “national public health emergency,” but what has defined its response is not any impressive or effective national public health response. Instead, the public has been regimented into believing the pandemic’s spread could be solely or mainly their own individual fault by way of the now-ubiquitous face masks and face shields.
Of course, nobody disagrees with the idea of individual or personal responsibility. Studies on people’s activities show that Filipinos have been very cooperative: We have been found to be world leaders in the wearing of face masks outdoors. Location-based data also found that Filipinos largely stayed at home, and away from outdoors, from work and from school.
Ask any Filipino today, and she could explain to you the importance of face masks and physical distancing. This is on top of enduring the world’s longest and strictest lockdowns that hoped to “flatten the curve,” yet another term that’s already too familiar to Filipinos. It would seem that with such cooperative citizens, the battle against the pandemic could have been half-won.
But despite the public’s extraordinary sacrifice, including the loss of jobs and livelihood, and the mental stress of surviving a pandemic in a Third World country, we still fall short. And as the numbers of coronavirus cases continue to rise, the administration could only tell us: Also wear face shields.
The “individualization” of responding to the pandemic (a global epidemic) and to the national public health emergency reached absurd lengths with the imposition of barriers for motorcycle riders and back riders. No science was involved in the rule on motorcycle barriers, and never mind that public transportation as we once knew it has been largely suspended.
Couples and family living under one roof were thus prevented from sharing a motorcycle ride. Motorcycle owners shelled out hundreds of pesos to obey the arbitrary rule, only to find out later that the government would change its mind as fast as it could invent the rule.
Beyond preaching personal responsibility, and imposing weird notions of it, the government itself, however, has not been responsible — and doesn’t wish to be held accountable. We have seen top officials wearing masks the wrong way or not wear masks at all. We’ve seen officials and law enforcers act as if they couldn’t be infected. We’ve also marvelled at the idiocy of officials defending the motorcycle barriers.
When health care workers raised their voices in late July and asked for a “time-out,” officials could only express disbelief and anger. One senator said the health care workers should just work harder.
The public has been looking up to health care workers for leadership since Day 1. We know they are the ones who could help in a public health emergency. And the public supported them in the calls for mass testing, tracing, and treatment, and for total support for what they do. Many have died amid official negligence and ineptitude, but health care workers continue to go on duty, and for long hours until they fall asleep on the floors of hospitals.
It was the public which roundly and loudly condemned the shortage of PPEs and face masks, and the lack of transportation and housing, for health care workers in the early weeks of the lockdowns. Scholars in state colleges and universities responded in producing face masks and face shields, and in the manufacture of the alcohol, disinfectants, and soap. People volunteered to drive for health care workers, and opened their spare rooms. Small and medium-scale businesses transformed apartments, dormitories, and motels into temporary living quarters for doctors, nurses, and hospital staff. There were initiatives that gave them meals several times a day.
The government was strict in apprehending, arresting, and detaining “violators” of rules on lockdowns, face masks, and physical distancing. But when it comes to those who raid the coffers of PhilHealth, those who conduct birthday parties amid a lockdown, or those who are incompetent in performing their official duties, the government becomes considerate and lenient. Officials go on staycations and the highest official appears only weekly, belatedly, and while pretending to be the hardest-working.
As of now, there seems to be no end in sight so far for this pandemic and national public health emergency. Millions have been laid off, many businesses have shut down. And yet the government insists on telling K to 12 and college students to go back to school. Officials claim they are ready for resuming classes. But whether schools are equipped, teachers ready, the broadband networks sufficient, nobody has asked the students and their unemployed parents whether they’re ready. The sinister and pernicious idea is that only the lazy and uncooperative don’t wish classes to resume. See what the government did there?
Students, teachers and parents are obliged to be responsible, but the government is not being responsible as to making sure they are all equipped and ready: The learning and teaching modules, the broadband access, the gadgets and equipment, so-called modes of blended learning. Props to local governments of Manila and Pasig who know their obligations to the nation’s students and teachers, but even providing them gadgets are a poor substitute to admitting the extraordinary conditions today are not fit for learning, especially for the majority who have no luxuries such as unlimited high-speed broadband, spacious houses, bottomless food and groceries, and parents who can afford not to go to work.
Sure, personal responsibility is important. But, there’s the political aspect to it: Envisioning a roadmap to recovery, putting medicine over the military, mobilizing resources, manpower and brainpower, enacting bailouts and stimulus for citizens and small businesses and not the wealthy few. Face masks and face shield cannot and shouldn’t cover all that up.