Health versus the economy?

COVID-19 is raging through Metro Manila at this very moment far graver than it did last year. This after it also peaked in Cebu City higher than it did last year. So, the question begged to be asked – what did we do so far? Because  we haven’t actually controlled this pandemic yet. If it’s any consolation, we’re not alone, the rest of the world is in the same dilemma, with the exception of a very significant few. Second surge, third surge, and probably a fourth, even more, epidemiologists already said this would happen. And the reason seems to be the title of this article.

This has been a continuing argument from the start. Scientists and doctors promote protocols to contain the virus, which include, among others, restriction of movement through physical distancing. What varies is only the extent. But lockdowns, quarantines, and isolations do lower the spread. As a result, the economy faltered in 2020. Politicians and economists (not all) argued for reopening the economy. Here, there, and everywhere. And then the surges return as expected. It seems everything is pretty predictable.

In February, I wrote about the cost of human life. For in the end, it boils down to that. You keep a tab on movement and mass gatherings, the number of cases and deaths go down, you reopen the economy, they go up. Worse, both the authorities and the people behave as if the pandemic is already gone. Just try to go around and see how the government and people behave today while the pandemic is at its worst. Then compare it to last year when the peaks were not as high as today. People are going to beaches and parties as if it's 2019!

While the doctors and scientists would generally rate health first, the other group would push for economic reopening, saying the death rate is actually low. Which literally means allowing more deaths (since it is low anyway!). Others would say we should balance both and try to keep a reasonable rate of slowly reopening while maintaining health protocols to depress transmission. Easier said than done since we already saw that any kind of opening automatically resurges the positive cases. We saw this last year, here and in other countries. It’s pretty predictable.

In science and in mathematics, we call this trying to keep the equilibrium. Pretty easy for a system which tends to normalize to an even state, but extremely hard and tricky for one which tends to exponentially expands when allowed to. That’s why the R rate is an important metric. Keeping it to lower than 1 or much better, nearer to zero would be the right track. We should very slowly venture opening while keeping a tab on this number and immediately retract whenever it reverses its negative trend. And reversal to the positive direction will be open to exponential rebound to where we are before, where we are now, and worse. It should always be people's lives before the economy. Not the other way around. Not even side by side. My personal opinion.