Rise in COVID cases due to indiscipline

We’ve got one more week to go to find out whether Cebu City should graduate back to a General Community Quarantine (GCQ). Being on stay-at-home work has meant that the only story worth reporting is about the COVID-19 cases, which has reportedly risen in Cebu City. However, the social media is full of people with their medical analysis giving out their own prognosis on what is happening in Cebu City, according to their own thinking, which of course has not been correctly analyzed. Thus, in the end, people pin the blame on either Mayor Edgardo Labella or to Office of the Presidential Assistant (OPAV) Michael Dino for the many things happening in Cebu City. How wrong these people are!

Even if you are the city mayor, you cannot really make your own decisions. It is the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF-EID) that decides on whether we should stay in ECQ or graduate into a GCQ. The problem with the IATF-EID is that they are a colloquial body and therefore our netizens cannot pinpoint a person whom they want to blame for the mistakes they may have committed.

If any, netizens should principally blame the indiscipline of the Cebuano citizens. We have seen the various photos showing failure to do social distancing or wearing masks or perhaps not washing hands. This all leads to people contaminating people. However, we must also look into where these people live within Cebu City where homes are so linked together; they can never do any social distancing even if the people living there want to do so.

Why are many barangays or sitios like this? If we have to blame anyone, it is the Office of the Building Official (OBO) that closed their eyes and allowed people to live so closely to each other. Of course, in fairness to OBO, it is really allowed by the city mayor because they know it adds to more votes during election time. This has been done since time immemorial so we shouldn’t pin the blame on a single politician. However you can partly blame those politicians that have stayed in power for more than 20 years.

So at this point, those seeking a political office ought to come up with his or her solution to this problem prevailing in Cebu City where homes or shanties are constructed too close to each other. I’m not saying that we can solve this problem in one election. I dare say that we first split Cebu City into North and South, then call for a barangay convention separately for the North and another one for the South and ask for solutions to make Cebu City a better city. For instance, we should never allow a barangay to be so huge like Guadalupe. We should split it now!

So in the election year of 2022, I suggest that well-meaning politicians start their campaign to improve the way of life in our barangays. This, in my book, is the new normal for our up and coming politicians. Those old ones seeking to return to power, I dare say people should no longer give them a second thought because they are just there to be in power.

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The latest we got from the Department of Transportation (DOTr) is that they are thinking of allowing only motorcycle back-riding for private use. Well, at least this is now in the woodworks of DOTr because they know too well that husbands and wives who ride to work on their family-owned motorcycle can work again. Don’t forget that married couples do not do social distancing at home nor wear masks because they know that they do not have the virus.

This report came from DOTr Assistant Secretary Goddes Libiran who clarified that only the return of back-riding for private motorcycle use is currently under consideration, subject to the release of health safety guidelines by IATF. He said that “what the IATF considers allowing is the private use of motorcycles with back-riding, subject to health and safety protocols that are now being formulated by concerned agencies such as the DOTr, Department of Science and Technology, Department of Health, Metro Manila Development Authority and Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).”

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