No to lockdowns extension

Over the weekend, I got this report from a publication called I & I, which has become viral in social media, as it is entitled, “There’s more evidence that lockdowns were a massive waste of time and money!” This is something that people are just learning after three months under a lockdown. I’m reprinting a portion of this report not because I & I isn’t a famous publication or newsletter, but that the author reported the evidence collated by JP Morgan Chase & Co and a research paper released in early May, by Thomas A. J. Meunier of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. These are famous institutions that we should listen to as it affects all of us. Mainstream media did not print this.

“The nation’s economy is on track to drop by more than 30% in the second quarter. Unemployment is well into the double digits. Half of small businesses might close in the next six months. All for naught, it would appear, giving the growing pile of evidence that the economic lockdowns didn’t work. The latest evidence comes from a report out of JP Morgan Chase & Co. this week. It finds that there’s been no increase in cases or deaths as other nations and US states start reopening.

This flies directly in the face of all the public health experts’ predictions of a major spike once people started moving about. “Virtually everywhere, infection rates have declined after reopening, even after allowing for an appropriate measurement lag,” says the report’s author, Marko Kolanovic, a quantitative strategist at JPMorgan. “This means that the pandemic COVID-19 likely has (its) own dynamics unrelated to often inconsistent lockdown measures that were being implemented.”

Another research paper released in early May, this one by Thomas A. J. Meunier of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, found that the lockdowns in western Europe had no evident impact on the epidemic.

“Comparing the trajectory of the epidemic before and after the lockdown, we find no evidence of any discontinuity in the growth rate, doubling time, and reproduction number trends,” Meunier said.

These are research items that were very recently unveiled and I can only second-guess why the mainstream media did not publish this report. But for us in the Philippines, especially in Cebu City, our Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) ends at the end of May this Sunday and based on these recent reports… it is now incumbent for the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) to no longer accept anymore extension on our lockdown as we can prove that our fatality rate for the whole country is only 865 deaths. As I already wrote… there are far more deaths due to dengue than COVID-19.

Over the weekend, I found a July 2019 report published by Rappler that showed the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) together with the Department of Health (DOH) reports a total of 622 deaths due to dengue and 146,062 cases from Jan. 1 to July 23, 2019.It added that Cebu Province had the highest number of dengue cases in the Visayas with 5,935, followed by Iloilo with 5,327, and Negros Occidental with 3,266, as reported by the NDRRMC. Mind you, this report did not even mention the deaths due to tubercolosis!

Although this is mainly attributed to Cebu’s being the most populated island, Cebu City according to Councilor David Tumalak called for more vigilance by local officials. Today the total fatality rate for COVID-19 in the country is only 865 deaths yet we went on a nationwide lockdown… we didn’t do that for dengue fever! So at least the IATF through Pres. Rodrigo Duterte are now thinking of going on a barangay or sitio lockdown rather than shut down the entire nation. This is what we expect the IATF to do after the end of May… no more lockdowns!

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I’ve learned that Pres. Duterte is now searching for a person to replace Department of Health (DOH) Secretary Francisco Duque III perhaps sensing that by now… it was time for him to go. A month ago when a good number of Senators wanted his resignation, I defended Sec. Duque because they really had no evidence of wrongdoing against him.

However last week, Sec. Duque said that we were already in the second wave of COVID-19… something that Press Sec. Harry Roque refuted. Then suddenly the DOH apologized for the confusion caused by Secretary Duque’s announcement that the country is already experiencing a second wave of coronavirus infections. Special Assistant to the Health Secretary Beverly Ho confirmed in an online briefing that the Philippines is still in the first wave of the outbreak, as earlier clarified by Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque. Now you know why Pres. Duterte is looking for a replacement for Sec. Duque.

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