We agree with the IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva. She pointed out that some emerging countries like India, Brazil, Argentina, Iraq, and, yes, the Philippines, “grapple with high caseloads that cloud the near-term economic outlook.” 

One of the endnotes of the recent online annual meeting of the IMF-World Bank Group, recovery prospects within this group are highly uneven. This is in contrast to China and Vietnam which succeeded in containing the virus, avoiding recession this year and establishing a clear path for rapid growth in 2021 of at least 7%. 

It is ironic that the Philippines is trying to do everything to address the pandemic and cushion its economic harm. The Government has made the earnest efforts to slow the transmission, support jobs and income losses and reallocate resources away from contact-intensive sectors. 

Despite these, President Duterte’s chief economic manager, Finance Secretary Sonny Dominguez, admitted that the recession this year would likely be deeper due to the reimposition of strict lockdowns in Metro Manila and a few provinces in August.  The Secretary’s estimate is lower at about 6% compared to the initial forecasts. The Fund projects an even lower 8.3% economic contraction this year due to continuing weakness in consumer confidence and private investments. 

We hope Washington is wrong in this latest October forecast of the country’s growth outlook, its third, which is way below the average for developing and emerging markets at negative 3.3%. 

The Fund highlighted one important need.

Of great urgency is for countries with high infection for a “reassessment of spending priorities.” 

Is there a need for reassessing spending priorities in the Philippines? 

In our column in another paper, we wrote that unsound public spending qualifies as a public governance deficit. In three days of a special session after resolving its speakership controversy, Congress passed the 2021 budget amounting to P4.506 trillion. The indefatigable Bicol Rep. Joey Salceda was quoted as saying: “We will work on the New Deal for the New Economy, to energize the economy, revitalize trade and investment, regain and exceed our human development achievements and diffuse growth and employment to the countryside.”

Perhaps, in the Senate deliberation, attention could also be given to Congress’ minority group’s critique that public spending appears lopsided in next year’s budget. Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Zarate highlighted that out of P1.1 trillion for infrastructure, only P2.3 billion or 0.21% was allocated for the construction of hospitals and health centers. Contrast this with the allocation to the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict of a jaw dropping P19.1 billion. The pandemic is a national emergency that demands quick and substantial action. But we cannot deny that the problem of the Left’s armed struggle has been with us even before the formation of the New People’s Army in 1969. 

How can the 2021 budget cover the enormous cost for the indigents among us infected with and hospitalized for COVID-19? Swab tests have to be paid for by the people themselves. Hospital bills can run to half a million to more than a million pesos depending on the procedures. No wonder, in the recent “Light and Shadow” presentation of Dr. Vic Abola on the pandemic winners, IT and telcos, Dr. Bernie Villegas added health and wellness products and services. This is a clear case of a public governance deficit that is funded by civil society.   

Setting aside funds for COVID-19 vaccines sounds sensible but time inconsistent. Suppose the vaccines become available beyond 2021 while the virus remains unrelenting, continuing on its surge? By all means, let us allocate some amount for the vaccines but let it be rationalized. We cannot inoculate all the 108 million Filipinos at once. But containment measures should be prioritized and strengthened so that the need for the vaccines would not be as pressing as avoiding more mortalities. The narratives of countries that succeeded in bringing down their infection and mortality rates should be helpful to our legislators. 

Basic public access to hygiene facilities is beyond the reach of some seven million Filipinos based on 2019 data from the Department of Health. They cannot wash their hands because neither water nor soap is available. Our exhortation to wash hands, wear face masks and face shields is meaningless. There is a high level of awareness but the poor cannot afford these health protocols. Avoiding crowded places is also Greek to them because their housing units are small and cramped. 

What is saddening is that the budget, as passed by Congress, according to the Senate’s pork hunter Senator Ping Lacson, continues to undergo amendments in a small group in Congress. He discovered a pattern of reducing the national infra projects in favor of local infra projects “that were apparently pushed by congressmen.” Lacson quoted Article VI, Section 26 of the Constitution in admonishing his counterparts that amendments even for errors after the passage of the budget shall not be allowed. 

This is what the Fund was concerned about. 

There are other propositions that would define our momentum for recovery.

First is the global dynamics of the virus. Last week, for one day, more than 400,000 people were infected. This has pushed the global incidence to 40 million with over a million deaths. Ten-million increases take a shorter time today than previously. With the onset of winter, Europe is again the epicenter and more lockdowns are expected. Once the effects spill over to trade and investment, the prospects for many emerging markets including the Philippines would be bleak. We shall see the impact in the overseas cash remittances which shrank by nearly 3% in January-August 2020. As pointed out by the ANZ Bank recently, there is limited scope for offsetting the impact of the global pandemic on remittances. In fact, some 10% of our overseas workers have returned and more are expected. Our old reliable mitigant to trade shortfall is getting undermined by the virus. 

Second is confidence. While the Government acted fast on monetary and fiscal measures to cushion the impact of the pandemic on both jobs and health, we cannot say this with great compliment to our health authorities. We are now in the seventh month of the pandemic and it’s only recently that we could afford to somewhat ease the lockdown. What is troubling is when we start going into the second and third waves. Flattening the curve is crucial for restoring confidence of both consumers and investors. 

A common theme in many Webinars during the last Fund-WB Annual Meeting was the need for sustained policy support to motivate business activities. This costs money. While Fitch raised the likely possibility that the Philippines will ramp up higher debt because revenues are weak, we are not overly worried. Going into fiscal overhang and greater indebtedness is thrust upon us by the pandemic.  We should bite the bullet, but only after we ensure that public spending is earmarked for promoting jobs and health. Treasurer Leah de Leon should by all means, source the money from the capital markets with so much liquidity and charging the lowest rate in decades. If we could turn this around and produce even a little growth higher than 2-3% market rates today, the Republic should still be ahead.     

There are other spoilers. The Philhealth scandal is the most insensitive portrait of bad governance in the Philippines especially today. We have the “pastillas” bribe takers, according to Senator Risa Hontiveros, from the Bureau of Immigration who have practically “rolled out the red carpet for the ‘online gambling industry and the cross-border trafficking of women.’” The cited 2019 Commission on Audit report on public works project execution does not inspire public confidence. Delayed and unimplemented projects worth P101 billion violated the procurement law. In 2018, the amount was more staggering at P118 billion. Some projects were not even started at all. Can we expect anything positive from investigations of these scandals?

During this crisis, the major casualty is indeed confidence. No doubt, uncertainty has increased and pressures on survival have multiplied. Strong policy support is essential. From a macroeconomic standpoint, it is important to ensure that liquidity and credit are available while cushioning firms and households from the economic effects of the lockdown. 

During China’s Financial Street Forum two days ago, BIS General Manager Agustin Carstens, former governor of Bank of Mexico and finance minister, championed two important ideas of financial deepening and financial innovation. For him, promoting high-quality savings over the long run will help in “removing uncertainties and concerns that are holding back current consumption and support China’s efforts to rebalance its economy.” 

The Philippines is no different from China where financial deepening and developing a good pension system can help increase local savings. A good pension system will help long-term business endeavors and “reduce herd mentality and irrational market movements.” A robust capital market compensates for the banking sector when distressed.

 Financial innovation and digital services, and they have many adherents in the Philippines, can support the country’s payment system as they are doing now. Healthcare provision can receive a tremendous boost from the digital push. Digitization can also strengthen financial literacy.  This can lead to higher savings and investment.

 These are some building blocks of an exit strategy to the economic deadlock. Worry is not one of them. After all, as a humorist once said “worry is like a rocking chair; it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere.”

If facemasks weren’t effective, then why do doctors wear masks when performing surgery? So the argument goes when the subject of public mandates to wear masks come up. The problem with this position is that public settings are obviously not operating rooms.

As practice goes, doctors wear facemasks during operations because, though in a sterile environment, it’s necessary to protect the patient that has been cut up and now has an open wound as such could easily get infected by germs from the doctor’s mouth and nose. Another reason, though secondary, is to protect the doctor from possible splashes when he is cutting up the patient.

And yet, this is not the situation being contemplated in relation to the mandatory requirement to wear facemasks with the ostensible objective of controlling COVID-19 spread: the lack of training that most of the general public have in wearing masks, the quality and cleanliness of the masks, the extent to which the masks itself can actually stop transmission from one person to another, the physical closeness of people to each other (including population density of the areas involved), the quality of air circulation, and so on are all clearly different to the circumstances inherent in an operating room.

Pharmaceutical and biotechnology expert Roger Koops (“Year of disguises,” AEIR, Oct. 16, 2020) asserts that whether you’re talking of a “surgical mask or N95 mask” such “has no benefit in the general population and is only useful in controlled clinical settings. Further, it has been considered a greater transmission risk than a benefit in the general population.”

In other words, masks are generally useless in relation to COVID-19 spread.

The huge error of many people, according to Koops, is believing that masks are barriers. They are not. They are “filters.”

The ordinary masks available to the public are designed to filter specific things (and only those things) and are not usually 100% effective. They are designed for normal breathing and for short durations (hence not meant to be worn for hours).

As pointed out by Koops, there is “only one type of mask, the surgical mask, which has shown any ability to reduce, not eliminate, virus transmission.” But — and here’s the crucial part — “the surgical mask is not intended for use outside of a controlled, sterile hospital surgical field where its use and function can be controlled. It has limitations.”

In brief, imagine you’re infected and wearing a facemask: the virus gets into the mask, the virus remains in the mask, the mask is now contaminated with the virus, the mask now carries the virus. The next time the wearer takes it off, breathes out, or does whatever normal human action, the virus is expelled into the surrounding environment. In other words: the face covering merely altered “the timing of the virus getting into the environment, but it now acts as a contact source and airborne source; [the] virus can still get into the environment.”

On the other hand, imagine you are not infected but wearing a mask. You will encounter in the environment various “virus, aerosols, or droplets, the virus and aerosols will likely penetrate. If the droplet is stopped, the surface is now contaminated. This means that if the surface of the covering touches the mouth or nose, you can become contaminated, i.e. infected.” Thus, “if you

inhale, you can become contaminated. If you touch the face covering, such as pulling it up and down, you can become contaminated.” Finally, “because the surface is contaminated, a person can also expel the virus back out into the environment just as with egress. This can be done by talking, breathing, coughing, etc.”

Koops makes a crucial point: “Stopping a *droplet* is not the same as stopping the virus!”

And you’re not even helping your neighbor, as some of the more pompous self-righteous defenders of mandatory mask wearing are wont to declare: you’re actually possibly more dangerous to those around you. “You are now becoming an additional potential source of environmental contamination. You are now becoming a transmission risk; not only are you increasing your own risk but you are also increasing the risk to others.”

The better practice is the tried and true simple Good Respiratory Practice: “cover your mouth/nose when coughing or sneezing. It is especially effective if you use a tissue or handkerchief as a receptacle and cup your hand around them. The hand now actually does serve more as a barrier. Plus, you will more likely remove the potential virus molecule from the environment by proper disposal of the tissue or washing the handkerchief. That is a practice we should be getting back to.”

There’s a reason why mandatory public mask wearing has never been imposed, despite every (and more serious) pandemic that happened before. And why no credible medical study or expert ever recommended mandatory public mask wearing.

Until now.

But then again, before this year, sanity and common sense prevailed.

Jemy Gatdula is a Senior Fellow of the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations and a Philippine Judicial Academy law lecturer for constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence.

What happened in the Speakership issue, and how it was decided and resolved, should be one more reminder of the reality that, not only due to the indifference of much of the population but also with the collaboration of a political class solely concerned with power and advantage, what obtains in the country today as in martial law days is the unaccountable and uncheckable rule of one man.

Only one sure winner emerged from the seemingly pointless Cayetano-Velasco contention for the Speakership of the House of Representatives. It wasn’t so much Lord Allan Velasco, and it most certainly was not the Filipino people. It was President Rodrigo Duterte and his increasingly powerful provincial dynasty.

Velasco’s prevailing over Alan Peter Cayetano could have been a victory for the citizenry had the contest for Speaker been over differences between the two in, first among others, their understanding of what the House, as part of a supposedly co-equal branch of government, is or should be, such as, for example, one or the other’s affirming its role in the defense of the Republic and expanding what little is left of democratic space in this country.

Operationally, recognition and affirmation of that responsibility would mean its members’, with the encouragement and support of the Speaker, introducing and passing bills that would, for example, contribute to strengthening rather than weakening the Bill of Rights, and, in the present instance, closely examining the proposed 2021 budget with the interests of the citizenry rather than themselves in mind, and despite Presidential preferences. 

But the contest was nothing of the kind. Cayetano and Velasco are apparently equally indifferent to the state of human rights and what it means to this alleged democracy. Velasco is as loyal and as submissive to President Duterte as the most fanatical diehards among his Lower House cohorts and the benighted sectors of the population.

The scuffle over the House leadership would have been no more than a meaningless media spectacle and a complete waste of time. But it proved to be of some value by once again reminding us all in whose hands is virtually all power in this country concentrated.

Like the rest of the “supermajority” coven in the House, and with the wishes of Mr. Duterte in mind, Velasco voted for the Anti-Terror Bill and against the renewal of the ABS-CBN franchise. His campaign for the Speakership was neither due to a disagreement with Cayetano over the principles of governance, nor about the imperative for the House to regain and defend its independence, nor about heeding the sentiments of that chamber’s constituency, 75% of which opposed the shutdown of ABS-CBN. There was in fact more than a hint in his statements before it ended that at the core of the struggle for power between him and Cayetano was who could better please the President and the rest of the Dutertes.

Despite their being political clones of each other, Velasco nevertheless did win against Cayetano. But other than in terms of the power and access to billions that he has thereby gained, his victory is hardly any assurance that he will realize whatever ambitions he may have for 2022. And, unless he and his accomplices manage to extend their terms, he will hold the now less than exalted post of Speaker only until the second quarter of that year. He does have the support of the Dutertes — Paolo, Sara, and their father — but since the family has its own plans, that may not matter much in 2022. Velasco, however, probably thinks that the Dutertes will be around even after their patriarch exits the political stage, and that he will need their help in the distant future when and if he runs for the Presidency himself. (The Speakership is traditionally a stepping stone to that post, hence Cayetano’s attempt to cling to it and Velasco’s contesting it.)

It is either that, or his conviction that President Duterte will still be in power after 2022, because, as some sectors are planning, he could run as his daughter Sara’s Vice-Presidential partner then, or, as some perennially self-aggrandizing term-extension plotters have been suggesting, there will be no elections that year. It seems that Velasco is looking beyond 2022 and planning for the long term — and believes that the Dutertes will continue to dominate Philippine politics for some time to come.

Those possibilities help explain why, despite the mere year-and-a-half left of President Duterte’s six-year term, it is still the Dutertes who were the clear winners in the Cayetano-Velasco dispute. No doubt with the urging of his son and daughter, Mr. Duterte threw his support behind Velasco and in effect warned Cayetano that the family will not brook any resistance to their wishes.

Definitely the loser in the process, Cayetano apparently gave hardly any thought to the possibility that his presidential ambitions will conflict with those of Sara Duterte’s. His abject apology for daring to imagine that he could butt heads with the Dutertes with impunity similarly affirms that despite the approaching end of his term, Mr. Duterte is still likely to remain as politically dominant as ever, perhaps as the power behind his daughter’s throne. Whatever ambitions Cayetano has for 2022 seem to have been dashed to pieces by his former patron. Unless he abandons his ambitions for a higher office, he will therefore have to look elsewhere for support. But that he will find such an alternative by 2022 that will enable him to credibly contest the Presidency seems doubtful.

But the bigger losers in Cayetano’s dispute with Velasco are again the Republic and the Filipino people. With hardly any revision, and with its priorities skewed in favor of pork barrel perks, and its allocating huge confidential and intelligence funds for the Office of the President and vast amounts for the military and the police as instruments of repression while ignoring the needs of public health and education to meet which the pandemic has made even more urgent, the P4.5-trillion 2021 budget of Mr. Duterte passed the House on third reading as Velasco promised.

But it is not solely the budget approval’s being rushed in the House in accordance with the wishes of Mr. Duterte that should outrage the civic-minded. Together with his forging the 2019 term-sharing agreement between Velasco and Cayetano and his intervention in resolving the Speakership issue, the precipitate approval of the 2021 budget is also one more indication of how he is totally in control of government. As every freshman in a political science class knows, the concentration of power in the Executive can only be to the detriment of the principle of separation of powers and the imperative of checks and balances that are as vital to the democratization process and the survival of the Republic as air and water are to human beings.

What happened in the Speakership issue, and how it was decided and resolved, should be one more reminder of the reality that, not only due to the indifference of much of the population but also with the collaboration of a political class solely concerned with power and advantage, what obtains in the country today as in martial law days is the unaccountable and uncheckable rule of one man.

But that is not all. There is also the distinct possibility that when the inevitable happens and Mr. Duterte passes from the scene, his rising dynasty will preserve the provincial despotism he has replicated at the national level, and even “improve” on it.

To paraphrase what the Nobel laureate in economics and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said about the US situation in the coming months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the next several years in the troubled life of this country could be “very, very ugly.” 

By Mark Buchanan, Bloomberg Opinion 

Get past the politics, and some numbers help bring one thing into focus: why, in the absence of a coronavirus vaccine, lockdowns may be essential. Epidemics grow fast, and there’s an inherent asymmetry between the ups and downs of the numbers: Without excellent testing and tracing, it takes a very strict lockdown to get numbers falling, whereas achieving explosive growth in cases is very easy.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues its sweep through the US, India, and Brazil, the dreaded second wave is now gathering strength in nations that had once contained the virus. Numbers are rocketing upward, especially in Europe, even as winter approaches, which will bring the added burden of seasonal illnesses such as influenza. Attempting to tamp things down, and to avoid overwhelming their health services, authorities in France, Germany, and the UK are now considering stronger social distancing measures, with others — including in Ireland and Israel — ordering short, strict “circuit breaker” lockdowns.

Yet if anything is as ineradicable as the coronavirus, it’s the fervid conviction of many that strict lockdowns actually bring worse consequences than COVID-19 itself. The lockdown skeptics — which include some scientists — argue that lockdowns entail massive economic damage as well as disruption to social communities and an increase in inequality. We’d be better off, they claim, if we instead aimed for herd immunity by letting the virus infect the young and healthy while protecting the vulnerable.

Some have portrayed the debate as reflecting a growing scientific divide, although this is far from the case. Almost all public health authorities come down against the herd immunity idea. Unfortunately, too much of the debate has been marred by confusion over why and when epidemiologists think lockdowns can play a beneficial role, and why the skeptics’ vision falls short.

It’s fair to say that both sides of the debate have at times misrepresented their opponents. Some lockdown skeptics make it seem as if proponents favor permanent lockdown until a vaccine comes along, whereas most see lockdowns as a drastic tool to be used over short periods of time — an emergency step, like dropping the control rods into a nuclear reactor about to melt down. Meanwhile, skeptics are criticized for wanting to just “let things rip,” too bad about the old and susceptible — yet most actually emphasize trying to protect the vulnerable. 

Get past the politics, and some numbers help bring one thing into focus: why, in the absence of a coronavirus vaccine, lockdowns may be essential. Epidemics grow fast, and there’s an inherent asymmetry between the ups and downs of the numbers: Without excellent testing and tracing, it takes a very strict lockdown to get numbers falling, whereas achieving explosive growth in cases is very easy.

Take the UK, for example. Its cases have risen steadily since mid-August, after earlier restrictions were relaxed and the government encouraged people to return to work. On Sept. 21, government scientists projected a worst-case scenario of around 50,000 new cases a day by mid-October in the absence of new restrictions, and they were lambasted by skeptics for spreading fear. Yet even this worst-case picture wasn’t too far off. With new cases now at 20,000 a day and doubling every seven to 10 days, the UK could reach that 50,000-a-day mark quite soon — and soar well beyond it thereafter.

Based on their modeling, advisers to the UK government in September advised a short circuit-breaker lockdown, which the government decided against. The same advisers have again suggested that a two-week lockdown starting Oct. 24 could save thousands of lives and bring viral numbers to a more manageable level. None of these scientists suggest long lockdowns, but they emphasize that short ones can reduce viral numbers temporarily — effectively resetting the clock — while minimizing economic and social costs. The timing and extent of such interventions is crucial.

The skeptics rightly decry these costs, including the disruption to children deprived of normal educational experiences. They argue this could all be avoided if the virus was left to spread among the young and healthy while older people and those with certain underlying conditions were protected. Yet such protection — for which skeptics rarely spell out many details — seems impossible, given the mingling of younger and older people in many households, and many of the vulnerable relying on younger carers. Regardless of age, many are suffering from the lingering effects of long COVID.

The justification for lockdown remains the same now as it was back in the spring — to get numbers down, keep hospitals from being overrun, and buy time to develop much better tracking and tracing capabilities. As many people have pointed out, lockdown is just one crude tool for fighting COVID-19 (along with mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing, and working from home), and it wouldn’t be necessary at all with tracking and tracing capable of keeping the virus from finding new victims. But many nations are a long way from that. Until then, getting by without the crude lockdown tool seems unlikely.