A case study in being a hot mess
MONDAY’S banner headline was a surprise only in the sense that we are not accustomed to anyone from the bloated Star Chamber known by the sentence-length name Interagency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) being frank about anything.
“Government reviews policy amid virus surge,” the headline read, over a story in which Bases Conversion and Development Authority (BCDA) President and “testing czar” Vince Dizon candidly admitted that the government was having second thoughts about its recent decisions to forge ahead with “reopening” the economy, given that those announcements were followed immediately by an alarming surge in the numbers of new coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) infections.
If it had been anyone other than Vince Dizon addressing the media on this occasion, the information would have likely been a lot less enlightening; as a relative outsider to the rest of the junta and one whose day job is somewhat more commercially oriented, Dizon seems to have a better appreciation of reality than most of his colleagues. He explained the situation in simple terms: At the time the IATF recommended easing restrictions, such as allowing cinemas to reopen and dropping testing and quarantine requirements for domestic travelers, the number of new daily cases in the country had declined to about 1,500 per day and had remained there for several weeks. Now that daily cases have shot up to more than double that, the situation has clearly changed, and the government needs to acknowledge that and act accordingly, even if it means reimposing some restrictions.
As far as anyone knows, the increase in case numbers just as the IATF was moving to further ease restrictions is a coincidence; the looser regulations could not have caused the surge, as they had not yet been implemented. This was largely thanks to prudent resistance on the part of local government units, who have consistently felt that the national government is neither sufficiently aware or respectful of their circumstances – whether they have struggled with pandemic or been successful in keeping it in check in their respective areas – and balked at the undue haste.
The surge in new cases did correspond to the first appearance of the more infectious and possibly more dangerous UK, South African and Brazil variants of Covid-19. While it is true that these variants require a bit more sophisticated processing to identify in test samples – processing that the country’s sole facility capable of carrying it out, the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine (RITM), is not well-equipped to do at large scale – absolutely no one believes the stubborn insistence of the Department of Health (DoH) up to now that the appearance of the new variants and the surge in cases is not necessarily related. That assertion sounds to many like the reassurances given by the government through January, February, and into early March last year that Covid-19 was not a serious problem and was not spreading rapidly through local transmission, which, as we are all painfully aware by now, was at no point true.
Sometime in the future, a future that unfortunately seems much more distant now than it did even a week or two ago, the IATF will serve as a fascinating case study in how a reasonably good idea on paper can turn into a hot mess in practice. The Interagency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases was a product of the Aquino administration, formed in 2015, and the first clue to its failure is in its name: The objective of the task force, as conceived, was to monitor the development of any potential pandemic elsewhere, and to devise response plans to try to prevent its spread to the Philippines and manage them effectively if it did find its way into the country.
The coronavirus pandemic was “emerging” as early as late December 2019 – hence the name, coronavirus disease 2019 or Covid-19)– yet it was not until it became apparent that there were both imported and locally transmitted cases of the infection sometime in the latter half of January 2020 that the IATF was even convened and began to discuss the matter. Even then, the situation could have been salvaged, or at least greatly ameliorated by the development of a strategy to carry out testing, tracing, and treatment of coronavirus cases, but instead of prioritizing a defensive response to a general public health threat, the IATF decided to prioritize a defense responsive to the potential political damage the presence of that public health threat posed.
That it was the wrong response can be easily seen by the comparative results of the IATF’s actions and those of a few local government jurisdictions that did act aggressively against the obvious immediate threat without regard to the political fallout.
The province of Surigao del Norte, along with the City of Surigao, is one example; a full two weeks before the IATF recommended to President Rodrigo Duterte that the “enhanced community quarantine,” i.e., hard lockdown be imposed in Metro Manila and surrounding areas, officials in Surigao implemented a virtually airtight closure of their province. The draconian, nobody in-nobody out measures were complemented with equally aggressive social support initiatives to keep everyone fed and comfortable, at least to the extent that local budgets and logistical capabilities allowed; for example, many municipalities diverted social services budgets to the purchase of local farmers’ and fishermen’s goods that were otherwise cut off from markets, in order to distribute fresh fish and produce to families stuck inside their homes. As the threat of the pandemic has from time to time seemed to diminish, officials have cautiously eased restrictions, only to immediately reimpose them at the first sign of trouble; as a result, Surigao has seen very few cases, only a handful of deaths, and has at no point had to worry about the capacity of its rather modest healthcare infrastructure being overwhelmed.
The underperformance or complete failure of administrative systems here in the Philippines happens so frequently that one could make a career of studying them, although recommending improvements based on obvious lessons learned seems an exercise in futility. Such is likely the case with the IATF as well, because unlike other notable flops, which have largely been the result of unwieldy systems, the IATF’s failure is the result of the people involved. For every Vince Dizon, Sonny Dominguez 3rd or William Dar in the IATF focused on trying to produce the best practical outcomes within his area of responsibility and having the requisite competence to do so, there’s a Rod Duterte, Frank Duque, or Puffy Roque cultivating an overweening concern for his own political image and clearly in way over his head in practical terms. That’s been an occasional curse for the Philippines ever since the country had its first taste of independence, and for which there is no apparent solution, other than some deus ex machina that nobody can plan for and shouldn’t really expect.
ben.kritz@manilatimes.net
Twitter: @benkritz