Tuesday, April 28, 2020

South Korea has a far worse situation than PH in January and February 2020.  But they acted swiftly and resolutely. They had 10,000 infections when we only had 1,000 in late March. But they managed without any nationwide lockdown like ours. No lockdown in Seoul or the entire country. They focused in Daegu where 65% of the infections were.



Speaking of proper health care, South Korea has an amazing 75% recovery rate compared to PH with a pathetic 8.5%. Probably worse is our very high mortality rate of 7.0% which double the 3.4 % of WHO. South Korea has less than 2.0% mortality rate like Thailand and Malaysia.
 
Singapore,  in spite of its very high infection of at 13,624, has a mortality rate of less than 0.1% at 12 fatalities. PH has about half (1/2) infections that of SG at 7,579  but with 502 fatalities. This is 40 times that of SG.

* * *


Ricardo B. Ramos has been a freelance writer and columnist for the past 38 years since the early 1980s. He is the managing director of the Pilipinas Sandiwa Heritage Foundation Inc., which he founded in 1990.


Rick B. Ramos
in , ,
Tuesday, April 28, 2020

South Korea, Singapore, and our situation

South Korea has a far worse situation than PH in January and February 2020.  But they acted swiftly and resolutely. They had 10,000 infectio...
Read More

Tuesday, April 21, 2020

The Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) published my article today, April 21, 2020, originally entitled " Lockdown & Accountability: They are Playing with Our Lives." I hope that it help enlightens our people on what really happened. From my random survey and observation, 7 out of 10 or 70% of the Filipinos do not know what happened. Worse, they do not seem interested or keen to know. They just want the Lockdown to end and move on with their lives. Perhaps. But there should be ACCOUNTABILITY on those Responsible for the Aftermath of the Luzon Lockdown that effectively included Visayas and Mindanao.



Lockdown & Accountability: They are Playing with Our Lives

Before President Duterte announced the lockdown in Metro Manila on March 12, he was scheduled to visit Boracay, supposedly to promote tourism in the country’s premiere tourist destination. What was the reason for the sudden change from promoting tourism in Boracay to announcing a Metro Manila lockdown?

There was no coronavirus epidemic yet in Metro Manila at the time to justify a lockdown. There were only 52 cases of infection and five fatalities, in a national population of around 110 million. President Duterte did not even take the COVID-19 threat seriously. He did not want to impose a travel ban on China flights even after Wuhan was locked down on Jan. 23, because he said it would be “unfair to China.” He also said “sasampalin ko ang veerus (I’ll slap that virus)” as if it were all a joke.

Senators Risa Hontiveros, Ping Lacson, Ralph Recto, and Joel Villanueva called for a travel ban on China flights after the Wuhan lockdown. In a congressional hearing on Jan. 30, former senator and now Antique Rep. Loren Legarda also reiterated the call for the ban. But Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said a travel ban on China cannot be implemented due to “political and diplomatic repercussions.”

President Duterte eventually imposed a ban on arrivals from China, Macau, and Hong Kong effective Feb. 3. However, what was very disturbing to learn later was that flights from China continued to bring in Chinese nationals, primarily tourists and those working in Pogos who returned to the Philippines from Chinese New Year celebrations in China.

When President Duterte later announced a Luzon-wide lockdown on March 16, there were only 140 cases of infection and fatalities of 11 persons. The Department of Health did not even declare an epidemic, unlike on Aug. 6, 2019, when the department declared a national dengue epidemic after 146,062 recorded cases of dengue and 622 fatalities. The dengue figures further spiked to 271,480 cases and 1,107 deaths by Aug. 31, 2019.

Going back to the question of why the sudden lockdowns in Metro Manila and the entire Luzon: Imagine the President announcing the Metro Manila lockdown on the same day that he was supposed to fly to Boracay to boost tourism there. Two weeks later on March 25, the President still claimed that he “is on top of this situation (COVID-19) at all times.”

An old friend of the President gave me an insight. “The government did not prepare for the coronavirus, hence, the haphazard decision for the lockdown.” On March 11, a day before the Metro Manila lockdown announcement, the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared that COVID-19 has become a worldwide pandemic. The Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases was given the WHO’s projection that the total number of infections in the country could reach 75,000 in five months if nothing was done. The Duterte administration apparently panicked, and thus the lockdown.

President Duterte followed the IATF’s lockdown recommendation due to the frightening projection on probable infections, and also because his administration did not prepare for the containment of the coronavirus. The government was not prepared with the testing kits required for mass testing. Only 1,296 had been tested as of March 20, compared to 15,000 in Vietnam and more than 300,000 tests in South Korea, which have helped flatten their curve.

Mass testing started only on April 14, about three weeks after 140,000 testing kits from China and Singapore arrived. They could have already started earlier and performed contact tracing and quarantine for persons in contact with those infected. This was what South Korea successfully did, but without imposing a lockdown in Seoul or any part of that country.

Those responsible for such neglect must be held accountable to the Filipino people, especially for the infections and fatalities including those of our health care workers. The contagion could have been contained even without a lockdown, if only the Duterte administration had prepared for mass testing much earlier, instead of two months later. The only epidemic we have is the incompetence and stupidity in government.

* * *


Ricardo B. Ramos has been a freelance writer and columnist for the past 38 years since the early 1980s. He is the managing director of the Pilipinas Sandiwa Heritage Foundation Inc., which he founded in 1990.

Read more: https://opinion.inquirer.net/129078/no-preparation-panicked-decision#ixzz6KEJ03vhA
Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

Rick B. Ramos
in , ,
Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Published in Inquirer : No preparation, panicked decision

The Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) published my article today, April 21, 2020, originally entitled " Lockdown & Accountability: T...
Read More

It is with great sadness that I learned of the demise of my good friend, former Senator Heherson T. Alvarez, who passed away this morning. Together with his wife Cecile Guidote Alvarez, they have been confined at the Manila Doctors Hospital for more than three weeks now. I was looking forward for Sonny and I to do our projects like building his Library and Museum in his hometown in Isabela. He also asked me to write his Biography because he said I am the one who knows him well. We have been friends for 30 years since 1990. I became his Consultant in the Senate on Energy & Environment after I gave him two briefings as Executive Director of the Environmental Network Center, Inc. (ENCI) that I founded. His asking me to be his Adviser even without a referral showed that he believed in Meritocracy or Merit System.

We had dinner last February 27 with retired Justice Antonio T. Carpio after his Lecture at the Ateneo de Manila University. It was a lovely dinner with great food and ambiance. I arranged the meeting with my two friends. The agenda of Sonny that evening, which I knew beforehand, was to convince J. Tony to seek the highest public office. It was an Enchanted Evening. I did not know that it would the last time we will see each other.

Sonny Alvarez was the Last of our Freedom Fighters against the Marcos Regime. He was the 'The Last of the Mohicans.' He fled to America where he sought political asylum in 1973 when Marcos wanted to have him arrested. He was against the Constitution that Marcos wanted to perpetuate himself in power. His brother was later tortured and killed. Sonny was one the youngest delegate to 1971 Constitutional Convention (ConCon). The other young and brilliant delegate was Adolf Azcuna from Zamboanga, who would later become Supreme Court Justice and Chancellor of PHILJA. Adolf is also a dear old friend and were "comrade-in-arms" in MANINDIGAN!

While in exile for 13 years, Sonny Alvarez lobbied in the US Congress and the State Department to withdraw its support to the Marcos regime. In between, he managed to obtain his Masters degree in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government in Harvard University. In 1985,He initiated the expose of the Marcos Hidden Wealth in America through the Mercury Post that was later published in the major national newspapers in the US. The Mercury Post won the prestigious Pulitzer Award for Journalism for its series of articles on the Hidden Wealth of President and Mrs. Marcos.


Rick B. Ramos
in , , , , ,
Tuesday, April 21, 2020

Godspeed, Sonny Alvarez!

It is with great sadness that I learned of the demise of my good friend, former Senator Heherson T. Alvarez, who passed away this mor...
Read More

 

Rick B. Ramos © 2015 - Designed by Templateism.com, Plugins By MyBloggerLab.com