Besieged by the COVID-19 pandemic and pushed into adversity, the current circumstance has stimulated a surge in patriotic and emphatic response from the private sector and civil society groups.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) a pandemic and people around the globe are understandably very worried, if not in a state of panic. In the Philippines, in an effort to quell the upward surge in infections similar to what is happening in other countries, President Rodrigo R. Duterte initially ordered a “community quarantine” of the National Capital Region (NCR) effective March 15 until April 1. However, on March 16, the President put the entire island of Luzon on “enhanced community quarantine” (ECQ-Luzon), strictly imposing a home quarantine, among others, starting on March 17 until April 12.

The coronavirus disease 2019/COVID-19 pandemic is just one more crisis, among the many, that the world has experienced in the 20^th century and in the present millennium. Each crisis has been a test of leadership, underscoring the need for a great leader, someone who can rally the citizenry, inspire them and keep up their spirits in the face of discouraging odds. Someone on whose wisdom they can depend on, whose words they can believe, and in whom they can entrust their lives.

IN THE OSCAR’s best movie of 2019, Parasite, the poorer family, driven back to their now flooded home and herded into a relief center, is wondering what to do next. Their scheme to latch on to the household of their wealthy employers is unraveling. The son asks his father what they are to do next. The father replies, “the best plan is not to have a plan.” This reaction to catastrophe after all the scheming and planning the family did to displace the entrenched household help of the wealthy seems to be the only way to handle uncertainty. Well, the ending of this movie argues against the patriarch’s approach. (Okay, this is not a movie review. But for the record, it’s a must-see movie on the social classes of South Korea.)

THERE’S NOTHING GOOD about the coronavirus pandemic, but maybe there can be collateral benefits. For example, it’s already forcing people to use the technology that everybody should have embraced already.

Strong coronavirus measures today should only last a few weeks, there shouldn’t be a big peak of infections afterwards, and it can all be done for a reasonable cost to society, saving millions of lives along the way. If we don’t take these measures, tens of millions will be infected, many will die, along with anybody else that requires intensive care, because the healthcare system will have collapsed.

Currently, the country has a National Security Policy and Strategy (NSPS) that very few in the government and the private sector know about. The document fails to provide guidance and foresight in light of crisis and hazardous situations. This is a major factor on how the government now responds to the COVID-19 pandemic issue: the government offers no clear strategy on how to get out of this crisis.

During global health pandemics aided by hysteria, there is global economic slowdown, deep slowdown bordering on contraction (“negative growth”). Millions of jobs are lost as companies and shops either scale down operations or shut down. Some governments around the world adjusted to help the ailing and dying businesses and job creators via various forms of tax cut.

Whatever you believe to be true about life, one thing is for sure -- time passes whether you like it or not. The future cannot be stopped. And since the future is a mystery, many of us want to get a peek, or at least get the best possible guess, at what the future’s going to be like, to see if things will play out the way we hope they will.

It has been a week under the “enhanced community quarantine” -- enhanced because it now covers the whole island of Luzon instead of just Metro Manila; community quarantine because the original term of “lockdown” was a shutdown and wasn’t reassuring.

I am pleased to share with readers a post Christine Tang and I wrote for GlobalSource Partners (globalsourcepartners.com ) on March 18 on the potential economic growth impact of COVID-19 and on March 19 on the recent actions government has taken in the monetary and fiscal policy areas.

COVID-19 said it to the whole world: stay home. With the lockdowns of their communities, countries humbly said yes. It seems it is only in the Philippines that the term “lockdown” has been so fearfully avoided, but call it by whatever name, “enhanced community quarantine” is a lockdown -- both a lock-in and a lock-out, where plain quarantine is simply a lock-in. Whatever, just stay home.