Which comes first?

By Art Jimenez

 

After ministering to the continually rising number of COVID-19 confirmed and probable cases and with the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads since the quarantine of mid-March, our health care frontliners have finally become bone-tired and called for a 15-day multipurpose “time out.”

One, return Mega Manila from GCQ to ECQ from August 1 to 15. Two, redesign the pandemic control strategy to retool the health care system that “has been overwhelmed.” Three, to correct some operational issues. And four, allow them to breathe, regain their strength and resolve, and come back fighting this “losing battle” against the unseen enemy.

Thus wrote Dr. Mario Panaligan, president of the Philippine College of Physicians and read during a live-streamed broadcast by Dr. Jose Santiago, Philippine Medical Association president on behalf of the medical and health caregivers in the country.

This got the goat of “Meyor Digong.” Then in a subliminal message the song, “Di Nyo Ba Naririnig” was played. It’s the Filipino version of the “Do You Hear the People Sing” sung as the finale of Les Miserables, the popular Broadway period musical adapted from Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel of the same title. The novel was set during the growing revolutionary fervor in France and culminating in the June 1832 French Rebellion.

The president said: “You want a revolution? Start it now!”

The doctors said: “We never mentioned any revolution,”

Or words to that effect.

Pushed to the corner. The open letter to President Duterte was sent to the AITF last Saturday (August 1) but was released to the media the day before and was accorded due publicity especially by the yellow press. The healthcare community asked that ECQ be declared over Mega Manila from August 1 till 15, among others. Malacañan officially learned about the open letter on Sunday morning, August 2.

Digong to whom the requests were directed was the last person to know about the letter and the purported August 1 ECQ start was already past tense. He said the letter with that kind of urgency should have been addressed to him. He was smothered even before he could do anything except what he was asked to do.

He who dislikes red tape immediately called on the IATF to discuss the letter and make the necessary recommendations. I think by that time, DU30 already had a decision: grant the requests.

MECQ, not ECQ. He also decided MECQ was better than ECQ. So he declared NCR and Cavite, Batangas, Laguna, and Rizal provinces under the less stringent Modified ECQ from August 4 to 18. The four provinces have among them 74 towns and 17 cities and a combined 2015 population of 12.9 million.

Meanwhile, NCR, the national capital region of 16 cities and one municipality has the same 12.9 million population.

Together, the 25.8 million Filipinos account for slightly over one-fourth of our 101.0 million people as of the 2015 National Census. They also represent around 53 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, of which NCR owns 36 percent.

The five are also the areas with the highest COVID-19 cases of late.

In contrast, our medical and allied professionals want the ECQ spread over a much wider Mega Manila that encompasses NCR, Central Luzon, Calabarzon, and Mimaropa.

Central Luzon, with 11.2 million citizens, has seven provinces (Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Tarlac, Zambales, and Aurora) and 14 cities.

Calabarzon is the acronym for Cavite, Laguna, Batangas and Quezon provinces while Mimaropa (Region IV-B) includes Occidental and Oriental Mindoro, Marinduque, Romblon, and Palawan. Calabarzon and Mimaropa have a respective population of 12.6 million and 3.0 million.

Altogether, the four regions have 39.1 million individuals.

Here at home, we remain under Modified General Community Quarantine (MGCQ). Meaning, public transport is allowed to a great extent and movement of people return to new normal but with strict adherence to facial masks, physical distance, and basic health protocols. Business operations may resume at different percentage levels, and so on.

Under MECQ only essentials are allowed: workers, industries, and transport of workers. The non-essentials, meaning all others, are to stay home.

Now, you can already imagine the socio-economic impact of MECQ. The jobless remain jobless; those who got back to work lose their jobs and income, forcing the government to shell out another tranche of multi-billion peso social amelioration fund; retailers-wholesalers now dealing face-to-face will have to shut down unless they are druggists and food sellers. In short, the economy will once again ground to a near-halt closing with it income valves and hope.

And as Tevye would philosophize, “on the other hand,” there will be more lives saved because of the lockdown; our healthcare workers will enjoy their time out and refresh, and hopefully, our healthcare system will correspondingly ease up.

With a healthier population, that is, safe from the pandemic, we can then focus on the economic aspect of our lives. That’s the prognosis. In other words, prediction; which may or may not come to pass.

My April 15 column. “Health or Wealth?” was the title of my April 15 in Part 3 of my series on the economic impact of COVID-19. I said then,

“Upon advice, President Rodrigo Duterte chose for us Health. And that’s when our economic wealth started to falter.

And so with the new lockdown, albeit a modified one, our economy will falter again, lose the little recovery momentum it has painstakingly gain in the last three months, bring down our economic contraction farther south, and shoehorn us into deeper debt.

The open letter has gained the backing of various sectors even those who were formerly for opening the economy even wider like many known personalities in business, the professions, and politics.

So it’s really time to take serious stock, are we for health or wealth? Which one leads to the other?

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?