LAST week marked the anniversary of the arrival of the yearlong contagion that has so far killed 16,000 and infected almost a million Filipinos. Government has relied on the Philippine Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) to vanquish Covid-19. This is composed of military and systems experts posing as medical practitioners and doctors posturing as systems experts. And the head of all these, neither systems expert nor a doctor, is a lawyer — the President. Experts and competent all in their chosen professions, they become incompetent and confused in their pretend roles.

Short of assigning blame to one person, this column simply draws attention to empirical results — an a posteriori proposition. But as in any tragedy of this magnitude, many share in its occurrence in varying degrees of culpability, guilt and shame. At the outset, this includes many actors, including the Filipino people themselves. This column is an attempt to help see our way clear through the coming years. Experts predict this pandemic to rage on in its deadly form for the next three to five years, at worst; or at best, the next 18 months. However, conjecture is heavy that Covid-19 will remain with us for the next generations, mutating to a less virulent flu-like coronavirus with effects roughly equivalent to the ordinary cold that similar vaccines have managed to tame over the generations.

Philippine response
Upon the World Health Organization’s declaration that Covid- 19 was a pandemic, countries responded in varying degrees of alarm. To Duterte’s credit, he understood the magnitude of the unfolding catastrophe, convening the IATF in January 2020. This was meant to be the leading edge — a manifestation of the Deegong’s political will, so to speak, to stop Covid-19 on its tracks. By April 17, 2020, the IATF had unveiled policies designed to meet the pandemic head-on. A composite of all important agencies in government, this was placed under the chairmanship of Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd of the Department of Health (DoH). In retrospect, this was a fatal mistake.

Lockdown/quarantine
On March 16, 2020, Duterte imposed a harsh but necessary social and economic remedy to prevent a sharp rise in cases with an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) for two weeks, subsequently extended to another two weeks, and then a series of knee-jerk intermittent cocktails of MECQ, GCQ, MGCQ — a plethora of acronyms — making the Philippine lockdown the longest and the most confusing in Asia. Yet, Covid cases kept rising. To mitigate economic dislocations, mostly of the jobless and the poverty-stricken, Congress enacted laws, principally the Bayanihan to Heal As One Act.

Health protocols
Health protocols were mandatory. Recommended by the WHO, “testing, tracing and isolation (TTI)”; massive field tests to cull out the positives; trace those infected; then quarantine. TTI was the core antidote against the contagion, along with “mask-wearing, handwashing and social distancing.”

All these prophylactics and therapeutics were also meant to free much needed hospital beds for the severe and ICU cases. These were measures imposed pending the rollout of vaccines, which Big Pharma has been salivating over, frantically pursuing, cutting corners to penetrate the market. April 2020, total worldwide cases were 1.91 million, total deaths, 122,010.

To date, April 2021, 142 million cases resulted in 3 million deaths. Closer to home, our neighbors have much better results. Vietnam with a population of 98 million has 35 deaths. This is equivalent to 0.40 deaths per 1 million Vietnamese. Japan, population 126 million, has a comparative figure of 76 deaths per 1 million. Thailand, 70 million has 1 death per 1 million. In contrast, with a population of 110 million, we ratcheted up 144 deaths per 1 million Filipinos, the highest in Asia. Our dismal figures are attributable to our people breaking health protocols. The IATF failed to operationalize TTI to the letter and allowed a cavalier attitude toward wearing of face masks, continuous washing of hands and social distancing. Lately, Filipinos put down their guard in anticipation of the roll-out of vaccines, resulting in a massive surge of infections, particularly in Metro Manila, where vaccinations for front-liners have commenced.

Blame the pasaway
Many of the middle class and elite, mostly in the capital region, have inordinately blamed the pasaway (unruly), the mass of unemployed and economically dislocated, living in hovels and risking their lives to feed their families. Even the government has initiated a half-assed plan to get these people back to their provinces through a failed “balik probinsya” initiative. Overall, the government’s inability to impose clear policies — from TTI, strict adherence to health protocols and introduction of asinine programs — reduced the country to the worst performing in Asia.

The Covid czar
If there is one individual who has been derailing the anti-Covid initiatives of the government, it could perhaps be the designated czar. Central to the fight against a pandemic is the use of correct, real and timely data to appreciate better how the contagion moves through the community. The czar declared in early May before the end of the first lockdown extension that “actually, nasa second wave na tayo,” while contradicting himself by declaring the country had flattened the curve “bumaba ‘yung kaso at nagstabilize ‘yung new cases.” His own department had to apologize for Secretary Duque’s statements verging on ignorance.

After one of the numerous congressional investigations and hearings on the government’s response to the pandemic, 14 senators filed a resolution calling for Secretary Duque’s resignation for his alleged “failure of leadership, negligence [and] lack of foresight” in addressing the pandemic.

His response was that he would stay put as long as the President trusted him. Indeed, Duque continues to head the government’s anti-Covid initiatives. Here, Duterte must share the blame for the failures.

Our current status
The OCTA Research group, composed of academically based experts, reported that in the first two weeks of April, the case fatality rate in the NCR had surged to 5.36 percent from 1.82 percent compared to the previous two weeks. The case fatality rate is the proportion of people dying from Covid-19 among all individuals diagnosed with the disease. This measure of the Covid severity is used to predict the outcomes. In this case, the possibility of cases overwhelming our hospitals and our meager health care system. More Filipinos will die.

Vaccination
What seems like a deux ex machina in 2020 is now a reality. The manufacturing countries are currently hoarding vaccines primarily for their own citizens — America mostly and its Western allies. But for criminal incompetence the Philippines had the chance of getting its hands on a few million doses. Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. and our ambassador to the US, Jose Manuel Romualdez, said they had arranged for the country to secure millions of vaccines from Pfizer, which were supposed to arrive by January 2021. This did not materialize because, according to them, “someone dropped the ball.” Thus, no commitment was given to Pfizer, so that the allocation was given to other countries. A similar vaccine will instead arrive sometime in the third or fourth quarter of this year. Senator Lacson was more succinct. “…it was Health Secretary Francisco Duque 3rd who bungled the deal to buy 10 million doses of vaccine from American drugmaker Pfizer.”

Meantime, more of our people will die, because the Deegong allowed this man to be czar.