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Friday, March 29, 2024

Hope for the New Year

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We greet the New Year today with renewed concern over the climbing number of fresh cases of COVID-19, and with outrage at the irresponsible behavior of an individual, just arrived from the United States, who felt entitled to flout health protocol just because she could —and at the system that enabled the violation.

The woman, who thought going on quarantine was beneath her, went on to party; she ended up testing positive for COVID-19 and infecting at least a dozen other people.

Before this, Filipinos had been enjoying a reprieve from COVID-19 with lower alert levels, greater mobility, and increased economic and social activity. We had even started pilot testing face-to-face classes in our schools. All these happened even with the threat of the Omicron variant in other countries.

The reprieve, it turned out, was just that.

Now that the rush of the holidays are over, we go back to the real-life concerns of containing the spread anew of the virus, inoculating as many Filipinos as possible, while also ensuring that the economy does not suffer and that people do not lose their jobs and go hungry.

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This Herculean task falls on the shoulders of a government that will spend no longer than six months in power, and takes place at a time when we are entering a high-stakes campaign period.

We wish we could sound more optimistic and less guarded, but all we could utter at this point is that the quality of this new year will hinge largely on the decisions we make and act upon right now.

For instance, if we want a sound response to the protracted crisis, we should make the effort to examine each candidate’s credentials, track record and proposed programs for a preview of how the government would perform under that leader.

And if we want to keep the devastation by the new COVID variant to a minimum, we should take precautions, ourselves, instead of relying on the often-confusing guidelines that we are being given.

Hope is always a good thing. But for hope to amount to anything, it should be accompanied by a plan and a resolution to ensure the greatest likelihood of attaining the thing that is hoped for. Otherwise, everything is just wishful thinking.

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