What about the poor?

"Is this a failure to communicate or a failure to think properly?"

I am back in Taipei after a very short trip to capital where I had hoped to meet with some high officials of government.

My original schedule was to be in Manila from Sunday evening, 08 March to Wednesday, 18 March, because we had a scheduled board meeting in Taipei on 19 March.

For starters, when I flew to Manila and landed at NAIA Terminal One, I noticed that there was nobody, but nobody, manning the DOH quarantine booth at the arrival area.  Neither were passengers asked to fill out health forms where they attest to their recent travel history and symptoms of illness.  

What could be the excuse/s? Naubusan ng forms? Sunday, so no work?

And then the dizzying events of the previous week: on Wednesday night, a breakfast meeting the following day that I was to have with a government official was cancelled.

The reason:  he had to go on self-isolation.  The next reason:  he had attended, a few days back, a high-level meeting of the NEDA-ICC where they later discovered that a government agency head who was with them in that meeting was tested positive for THE virus.

The result: the entire economic management team of the government is now in self-isolation, or quarantine, whatever our health officials choose to call such.

Another high cabinet member I had hoped to meet is also in self-isolation, working at home, by phone and the internet.  Twelve senators, or more, including those who hardly work to begin with, have also quarantined themselves.

After listening to the President Thursday night where the “lockdown” or “community quarantine” or “community slowdown” (again, will the DOH kindly tell us what is the official term for this disruption is?) was announced, I decided to go back to Taipei on Saturday.

On Friday, I cancelled our March board meeting scheduled for the 20th of the following week.  Four of the attendees are senior citizens, and one has a special health condition, and I thought they would be better off in some form of isolation.

That Thursday morning, I directed a MECO officer to search high and low in Taiwan for COVID-19 testing kits, after learning that our DOH had only 2,000 units in their hands.  One test kit is good for one patient.  It is not re-usable.

I listened to a recording of a Senate hearing presided over by Senator Nancy Binay in the presence of Senator Imee Marcos, where both were shocked to discover that RITM, the DOH center of excellence for tropical epidemiology, seemed blissfully unaware of the magnitude of the epidemic that a few days later the WHO would grudgingly admit has become a pandemic, with some 130 countries in every continent save Antarctica, infected.

Hopefully, I would have some good news today on our search for testing kits.

Was this the reason why for a month or so on end, we were claiming but three infected persons and one Chinese patient dead?  Italy and Iran were reeling under hundreds if not thousands of infected persons, and South Korea, Japan, Germany, France, if not tout l’Europe, not to mention China where it originated, and we had the singular distinction of having only three all February?

Today, as I write, some reports say we now have 98, jumping from 5 to 24 to 33, to 98 all in the space of ten days.  Another report says 111 have been infected.

“Are you sure your  country only has three persons infected?”, a diplomat from a First World country asked  me in late February here in Taipei.

 I was so embarrassed I could not give a definitive answer, other than to say many Filipinos just shrug off symptoms of the common cold.  

Which brought to mind what I and some of my staff were discussing about the extent of the coronavirus affliction in our country.  When it was discovered that a recent Taiwanese visitor had the illness after his return here, we wondered about the tracing of the contacts he encountered during the visit to Metro Manila and Corregidor.

If he had gone to several malls, or went to an entertainment bar and sat with some entertainers in a videoke session, one would logically surmise he had contact with some poor entertainment worker, or some poor sales lady in a shopping mall.  Where did he eat?  Who could he have infected there?

And then it dawned on us: those who may have been “in contact” are poor people. Probably living in cramped conditions with family in a slum area, or in a rundown boarding house with other persons.

Could the contagion have spread without our government able to do the proper contact tracing?  For lack of test kits or lack of prescience, or a higher-than-high dose of nonchalance?

Shudder at the thought.

Now our government has taken draconian measures, most of which are not even properly communicated to people.  I recall to mind a 1967 movie, Cool Hand Luke, starring Paul Newman, where the most memorable line was “What we have here is a failure to communicate…”

Friday morning, after the President’s television announcement, the subsequent explanations were several “failures to communicate” the impact of the NCR “lockdown.” With several conflicting statements, more confusing interpretations from the President’s subordinates.  And the perhaps more convincing because more communications-savvy people were in quarantine.  Oh my God!

Still and all, I go back to my original question when we were under-reporting three afflicted.  What about the poor?

The patients reported after three became five and then 11, were mostly rich or upper middle class, who went to private hospitals, and were diagnosed positive for the virus.  What about the poor?

Now worry about the impact on the seminal lives of our poor working class and those eking out livelihood in our underground economy.  Of workers being stopped in checkpoints after returning from home in Gen. Mariano Alvarez in Cavite or San Jose del Monte in Bulacan, to report for work in small business concerns where they have no employment IDs?  

On Saturday, the Metro Manila Council under the auspices of the MMDA announced a curfew from 8 in the evening to 5 the following morning.  Whaaat?

Martial law had a curfew from midnight till dawn. Is this another “failure to communicate” or a failure to think properly?

Please, please, think about the poor when you craft implementing guidelines for an otherwise necessary draconian policy.