"Call it red tape – or criminal neglect."
"Call it red tape – or criminal neglect."
In 2020, in the saddest Christmas of our life, the best gift probably is an anti-COVID-19 vaccine. It is a gift that will, if you believe scientists, save you a lot of aggravation, if not save even your life.
You won’t get an anti-COVID-19 inoculation as a gift this Christmas, even if our Christmas season is the longest in the world—from Dec, 16, 2020 to Jan. 6, 2021, Three Kings Day. If you are lucky, you will get the vaccine at the earliest, July 2021—if at all. Thanks to what government bureaucrats would call red tape but what critics would describe as criminal neglect.
In July 2020, Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. and Philippine Ambassador to the US Babe Romualdez negotiated, with the help of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, for Pfizer to supply up to ten million doses of Pfizer’s now legendary mRNA vaccine which has an efficacy rate of as high as 95 percent—for every 100 jabbed with it, 95 get immunity from COVID. Delivery was supposed to have been in January 2021, six months after the deal.
That deal is now gone for good, what Ambassador Romualdez describes as spilled milk. You cannot even make cheese out of the spilled milk.
The papers for the Pfizer vaccine purchase slept for two months at the Office of the Executive Secretary before they were forwarded to Health Secretary Francisco Duque’s office. It took Duque almost two months before he signed the required Confidentiality Disclosure Agreement (CDA).
Under the Ant-Red Tape Act of 2018, complex papers, like the Pfizer contract, require the government to take action in seven days; highly technical papers must be acted upon within 20 days. Whether it is seven or 20 days, both Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea and Duque appear to have violated the law on quick processing of papers. Remember: This is a deal that is a matter of life or death for up to 5,000 people—the equivalent of killing 1,000 people per year for five years of insurgency war.
“Somebody dropped the ball,” sneered DFA chief Teddyboy Locsin. Senator Panfilo Lacson identified Duque as the guilty one. The senator observed that “the captain ball” always messes up but stays in power because “the coach refuses to replace him.” As DOH chief, Duque co-chairs the Inter-Agency Task Force on infectious diseases.
“The more important question is, how many lives would be saved between January and when (if at all) the vaccines may be made available again to Filipinos,” mused Lacson, a former national police chief when it was still a badge of honor to be one. The senator has repeatedly called for Duque’s firing but to no avail.
The public perception is that with Duque in charge, the government has badly mismanaged its response to the COVID pandemic. In January 2020, amid a looming pandemic, the Health secretary refused to ban the Chinese from flying to the Philippines despite the fact that the virus came from Wuhan, a bustling Chinese metropolis. Next, he initially did not believe face masks were necessary for the public, preferring that these be reserved for health care workers.
Then, Duque lied repeatedly about the pandemic. He claimed it had subsided. In May 2020, he talked about a “third wave” of cases, meaning the number of people getting infected daily had declined twice before rising again to create a third wave surge. At PhilHealth, which Duque chairs, the plunder of the people’s health insurance money was systematic and colossal.
There was no letup in the sharp rise in COVID case. There was neither a second wave nor a third wave surge, only a sharp upward upswing like a jet taking off.
On May 20, 2020, there were only 279 daily cases and only five daily deaths. Three months later, on Aug. 10, 2020, new daily cases had peaked at a record 6,871, and daily deaths as 23, making the Philippines 19th in the world in total number of cases and the worst in ASEAN. Happily, as of Dec. 21, daily cases appeared to have stabilized at 1,721; daily deaths at 10. We are now No. 28 in number of cases.
What did not slacken was President Duterte’s lockdown, the longest and the harshest in the world (it began on March 15, 2020 and has not been lifted). The lockdowns killed consumption. Consumption by households is 75 percent of the Gross Domestic Product or national economic output. Government consumption adds another 12.9 percent. So for every P100 of economic production, nearly 88 percent is triggered by consumption; only 12 percent comes from investment or purchases of machinery, equipment, buildings, and other capital goods.
Because 88 percent of the economy was stifled by lockdowns, economic growth naturally declined by -11.5 percent in the third quarter and up to -11 percent in the whole of 2020.
In 2019, GDP amounted to P19.516 trillion. GDP should have expanded by 7 percent this year, to P20.882 trillion, without the pandemic. Instead, with 11 percent reduction, GDP would amount this year to only P17.369 trillion, or a loss of P3.5 trillion. That is the cost to the economy of the lockdowns. If it takes P2 million to create one job, a loss of P3.5 trillion is equivalent to 1.75 million jobs not being created. Thanks to COVID and its mismanagement by this government.
The P3.5 trillion would have enabled the government to buy as much as 14 billion doses of vaccines, at an average price of P250 per dose. Now, 14 billion doses divided by two (doses) is 7 billion. Divide 7 billion by 110 million, you get 63.63—the number of times the entire Philippine population could be inoculated with the anti-COVID vaccine. That is like getting a dose of the vaccine once every month for the next five years and three months.