Time to change our ‘Covid Team,’ Mr. President

LAST March 20, 2021, the country registered its single-day Covid-19 infection at 7,999 cases, the highest since the spread of the virus in the same month last year and which forced the government to declare a nationwide lockdown until June 2020.

Over this, we can blame it on the ‘character defect’ we have inherited from our colonizers, the Spaniards and the Americans, who taught us, respectively, the “balaha na” attitude and submission and acceprtance to the things that seemed beyond our control and, the “freedom” to do what we want anchored on lack of discipline and contempt for the authorities.

That both of these character defects are now in full display can be seen from the fact that the rise in Covid infection came at a time when the vaccines are already available; our false sense of security brought by the vaccines immediately resulted to most Filipinos ignoring the health and safety protocols daily being reminded by the government and which also resulted to a spike in the number of cases.

But beyond this, the other important factor abetting the rise of infection is the obvious failure by those tasked to address the problem—the Department of Health and the IATF in particular, to come up with better and flexible ideas and solutions.

After one year, they still remain “orthodox” in their view of the problem, trapped in the rules of the bureaucracy and no longer able to think “outside of the box,” so to speak.

One year since the outbreak started and where a lot possible remedies had also emerged, the DOH and its attached agency, the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), remain so attached to the gospel that our salvation can only come from the hands of Big Pharma and that any other possible cure, particularly local ones, should not be tried because these are not among in the list of Big Pharma.

More than one year since the pandemic struck, the “only solution” government can offer us is the mantra of social distancing and worse, lockdown.

This, for us, betrays that all throughout, the DOH and the IATF have not really conducted any serious study of the virus in order to find out if most Filipinos, especially those below 60 years old, can start living with it instead of resorting to the quarantine of large number of our population and thus freeing most Filipinos to productive works and– keep our economy moving again at the pace necessary to create economic growth.

We agree on President Duterte’s refusal to axe health secretary Francisco Duque and the other incompetents in his administration during the worst periods of the pandemic last year.

Indeed, it is wrong to “change horses in midstream,” so to speak.

But that was last year.

Today, Pres. Duterte should start to realize that the rise in Covid-19 is also a result of the utter inability of those he appointed to handle the problem effectively.

The government’s ‘Covid Team’ are, so to speak again, “at the end of their ropes,” their talents and abilities already exhausted. Nothing can be expected from them anymore. They should be fired.

Now.