A new economic approach to the COVID crisis

Aside from academic journals, I have been following of late the daily updates and live podcasts of Dr. Tony Leachon, former adviser to the National Task Force on COVID-19. I also follow the public posts of Cebu-based infectious disease specialist Dr. Bryan Albert Lim. And I’m glad that fellow columnist Leo Lastimosa is back on SibyaTV, the leading Cebu-based current affairs online streaming outfit. I regard Tony, Bryan, and Leo as straightforward and credible sources of information, opinion, and analysis about the pandemic.

This is not to invalidate any information and opinion coming from the Department of Health and other government officials. Yet it has been a year already since the pandemic hit us, and bureaucrats, acting as one, still have this propensity to massage the hard facts on the ground in a way that will buff up the government’s image.

The polishing ranges from such barefaced self-rating of government’s performance in crisis management as “Excellent”, to those obvious understatements about the data from hospitals and testing centers.

Now, listen to Dr. Tony Leachon; he said poor decision-making by government and the emphasis on reopening the economy drove the current surge in COVID-19 cases. “Our economic managers set us up to fail,” Leachon was quoted by news media as saying, “the loosening of regulations set the people up to be lax.”

Right.

There’s no question about the need for reopening the economy. The missteps lie in opening up the economy largely for resuming work and activities we used to do during pre-COVID times. Because we’re still supposed to be in war footing, we ought to change our view of productivity into advancing the life we want under present realities.

At present, we want to be safe, and we want to survive. If any work we do or support now puts us and others unnecessarily at risk, then there is no point of doing or supporting such work.

For instance, unless those in the tourism and hospitality industry fully understand how COVID-19 functions, they will likely struggle to recover from its effects (Wen, Wang, Kozak, Liu & Hou, 2020). For one, I am not yet aware of any specific and reputable safety rating standard that hotels, resorts and restaurants are required to meet for COVID-19 prevention. What we have are the general minimum health protocols, and even some of our isolation centers do not meet such basic protocols as airflow management.

Pandemic-related interdisciplinary collaboration is needed, wrote Dr. Bryan Lim. Among the solutions he saw lie in the fields of engineering, architecture and design. “Time to seriously modify the structure of buildings and offices. I'm sure our engineers and architects can come up with innovative solutions,” Dr. Lim said, “a poorly-ventilated workplace is most risky.”

There is much work to do when it comes to reopening the economy. The last thing on my mind right now is to travel to some white sandy beach, dine in a restaurant, or stroll inside the shopping mall. A view of the sunrise or sunset is enough for my mental health.

There are workplaces and public spaces to be redesigned, technology infrastructure to be upgraded; more regulators and their support team of contract tracers to be hired and trained. Products and services need innovators from various disciplines. The World Bank itself said that transforming agriculture into a dynamic, high-growth sector is key “to speed up recovery, poverty reduction and inclusive growth” from this crisis.

It has been a year already, yet have they really thought about what must change and what we should be focusing on?