‘We cannot lapse into a consciousness of backslapping and wanting only to hear praises when in truth and in fact this virus is far from contained and the national response to it has been wacky from Day One.’s
WE are in the midst of a surge.
So decided OCTA Research, a group of experts in the fields of medicine, statistics and social and political science, issuing a warning to the government that, thankfully, was heeded.
OCTA’s warning is why we are heading towards an ECQ lockdown this Friday onwards in NCR Plus and in a few other parts of the country. It is also the warning that has upset some folks in government, including other scientists and doctors, who have a different view.
One of the critics of OCTA is a UP medicine graduate who famously declared some time back that “we have contained the virus.” He now says that OCTA’s numbers are flawed (they’re based mainly on DOH numbers, I think) and that all the group is doing is scaring people.
Well, the virus that this doctor says had been contained has killed so many more after that declaration of his. I was almost one of its victims, too.
Contained the virus we have not been able to do. Not then, not now. In penitence for such an unfounded and unscientific pronouncement I hope this doctor says 10 Our Fathers and Hail Marys and just stops trying to window dress the realities on the ground. Just as OCTA was being criticized for saying what many sense but few are willing to admit, a news report about the “continuing rise” of COVID admissions was released. And another one about COVID cases in an NCR LGU that has doubled in the span of 30 days.
Contained? Or surging?
Another UPCM graduate regularly posts the latest inoculation numbers from the DOH. But something is seriously missing from these numbers: the target. What’s the use of posting the fact that we have deployed 20 million doses leading to 9 million Filipinos being fully vaccinated if we don’t say that our target is to inoculate 70 or maybe 80% of the population (now at 110 million) before the end of the year? Again, window dressing. No management committee in its right mind would allow a manager to get away with such a report without asking him what the numbers are “against target.”
In its right mind.
I will never tire of saying this in this space or even on my Facebook page: when we are speaking of the risk to the lives of millions, we call the glass half empty, not half full. We cannot lapse into a consciousness of backslapping and wanting only to hear praises when in truth and in fact this virus is far from contained and the national response to it has been wacky from Day One.
By the way: doesn’t the DOH count how many have injected themselves with petrol? It would be in keeping with the DOH’s proactive nature to do that, di ba Sec Duque?s
