Apples and oranges

Exactly a year after it was announced that a 38-year-old tourist from China’s Wuhan City had become COVID patient No. 1 in the Philippines, I drove around last Saturday in my part of town and visited some malls.

You can feel that unprecedented 9.5 percent economic contraction all around. Foot traffic in the commercial areas is usually heaviest on Saturdays. While foot traffic has improved since the worst of the lockdowns, however, last Saturday’s crowd was still far from the pre-pandemic numbers on a payday weekend, even with many items on sale and with just two weeks before the Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day.

Whether inside or outside malls, so many enterprises have folded or are closed “until further notice.” A handful of shops that drew my attention for bravely opening during the holidays have quickly shut down for good.

And it isn’t over, as players in certain hard-hit industries such as aviation and hospitality management have said. Deeper economic contraction is expected this first quarter. The continuing uncertainty aggravated by the spread of more infectious COVID variants plus the slow rollout of the vaccination program in our country mean at least another year of livelihood losses.

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Looking on the bright side, I was glad to see the massage and facial spas back in business, as well as nearly all the beauty and men’s grooming salons.

I couldn’t tell how the massage and facial spas were faring. But I could see the salons had a decent number of customers, getting hair treatments plus manicure / pedicure. With clients wearing masks plus face shields and salon personnel also wearing full protective apparel, and with alcohol everywhere you turn, I guess people now feel comfortable about physical contact with strangers.

Enclosed dine-in restaurants still have a problem, although a large hotpot eat-all-you-can establishment that opened a few months ago seems to be doing OK. As I have written, restaurants with al fresco dining option, or at least with table settings along the mall aisle outside the main dining area are more popular. Several new coffee shops have opened in my part of town.

Gardening stalls have become fixtures everywhere. Even a hardware store along a road near my home has opened an area for potted plants. Several home driveways have been turned into fruit and vegetable stands.

There were, of course, businesses that thrived in the pandemic. Apart from the obvious – the pharmaceutical industry, digital service providers, bicycle dealers and producers of virgin coconut oil – the roadside lechon manok / liempo stalls had long lines of customers even at the height of the enhanced community quarantine, and they continue to do brisk business.

Pet foods are also selling well, with no price spikes despite logistics problems. The veterinarians seem to be doing better than dentists and dermatologists.

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We’re learning to dance with the Wuhan virus. (We’ve had the Spanish flu, Ebola virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, African swine fever and now the UK, South Africa and Brazil variants. So why isn’t the COVID pathogen called the Wuhan virus?)

I’m getting used to not gathering with relatives and friends for birthdays and other milestones, to livestreaming and constantly casual attire. I believe I’m getting better at cutting my own hair.

But you can tell that people (especially minors) are becoming increasingly antsy under quarantine. The atmosphere at night is the most oppressive, when you see all the dark buildings in what used to be bustling enclaves, and physical distancing thrown out the window in the jeepneys because of the acute lack of mass transportation.

Public frustration intensifies with every month that passes still without a COVID vaccine, while we see inoculation getting underway among our neighbors.

The Department of Health said the study that ranked countries in terms of pandemic response, drawn up by Australian think tank Lowy Institute, needed “proper context.” The DOH has a point; resources and circumstances vary from country to country.

Still, there are people who agree with the ranking, which placed the Philippines at 79th spot among 98 countries and territories.

The COVID Performance Index, released on Jan. 28, was based on six indicators, using data available up to Jan. 9: confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths, cases and deaths per million people, confirmed cases as a proportion of tests, and tests per thousand people.

The rankings of the best and worst performers are largely unchallenged: the best three are New Zealand, Vietnam and Taiwan. China was excluded from the study because of the lack of publicly available data on its COVID responses. The United States, which has the world’s highest number of COVID cases and deaths, ranked even worse than the Philippines at 94th place. But at least the Americans have millions of vaccine doses now being rolled out.

Thailand ranked way ahead of the Philippines at fourth place; Singapore ranked 13th, Malaysia 16th, and Myanmar (with only 16,000 active cases as of Saturday compared to our 45,000), 24th. Indonesia, where President Joko Widodo’s vaccination in public last Jan. 13 kicked off their inoculation drive, placed 85th despite having nearly twice the number of infections than the Philippines.

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The DOH said the performance assessment failed to “capture the complex nature of pandemic response.”

“We can’t be comparing apples to oranges,” the DOH said.

In the past year since Patient No. 1 was detected, there have in fact been much improvement in what the DOH described as “Prevent-Detect-Isolate-Test-Treat strategies.”

Still, after nearly 11 months of continuous lockdowns, we still have the 32nd highest number of COVID cases in the world, according to the Johns Hopkins COVID tracker.

Meanwhile, our economy has suffered one of the deepest contractions, and the Philippines is seen by analysts to be among the last to recover in the Asia-Pacific.

Our vaccination drive is off to a bad start, with the stonewalling on the jabs for the Presidential Security Group, the dropping of the Pfizer ball, the hush-hush details of the Sinovac deal, and the alleged preference of President Duterte to get his vaccine shot in the butt so it can’t be shown in public.

And now here comes the COVID variant.

A year into the pandemic, recovery is starting, but we’re in a terrible place.