By Prout
The ongoing pandemic has, literally, at least two ‘life and death’ angles–the immediate threat to life of the COVID-19 virus and the not-so-immediate threat to livelihood due to community quarantine restrictions.
Since the declaration of a global pandemic in early 2020, many countries, including the Philippines, have been trying to strike a balance between these apparently opposing priorities–life versus livelihood.
Both are important, no doubt. But measures taken when one gets sick–going on sick leave until one gets well; isolating one’s self if the disease is infectious (not just COVID-19; tuberculosis is a common example, at least during its infectious stage); getting hospitalized if needed; taking an extended leave to fully recuperate–before going back to work shows how the balance is tilted in individual life.
Health concerns trump livelihood concerns.
If the health concern lingers and livelihood is threatened, the usual recourse is to borrow to continue to address the health concern. Livelihood is usually put on hold.
Now, let us project this typical individual/household scenario to the country as a whole. Should the priority change? We think not because the logic is the same. Life still trumps livelihood.
The only difference is that the household head has been replaced by government leaders. And yet, as recently dramatized through the leaked video of a portion of a meeting of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), it appears that the tilt is in favor of livelihood. All of us have seen it–when health workers pleaded for an extension of the stricter community quarantine because of rising COVID-19 cases (the highest single-day tally is 26,303 on 11 September 2021) due to the more contagious Delta variant, they get a tongue-lashing from the presidential spokesperson. The supposed reason for the outburst is that Filipinos are going hungry with stricter restrictions.
We agree that no one should go hungry. But to marry both interests, shouldn’t the government take on the responsibility of looking after the needs of vulnerable households as health professionals try to contain the pandemic?
Why relax restrictions and leave Filipinos to fend for themselves when infections are still at an all-time high?
If resources are getting depleted, borrowing is always an option. Our investment grade rating makes it easy for us to borrow from international lenders.
Declaring concern for the hungry people while at the same time risking their lives makes one wonder–is it the ordinary Filipinos’ interest we are protecting or the interest of companies that need workers at their stations? **
