BY JOHNNY DAYANG
If there’s something we cannot appreciate amid the contagion that is draining the country’s public health system, it is the abundance of people in government who contradict each other. They look amusing in their odd roles and they depict the sad state on how an emergency should be addressed from the perspective of experts.
This impression also reflects the outline of the inter-agency task force, with task to manage the pandemic. In recent weeks, there was a kind of disorientation following the conflicting interpretations made by some IATF members on how certain protocols are put into use.
For instance, in the use of motorcycle windscreen, the IATF, without considering the value of aerodynamics, has consistently fought for its relevance even if a biker and back rider wear full-face helmets. They even argue that couples need the divider even if everyone else understands that such position clashes with what partners do in actual life.
Moreover, the task force to be guided by health experts in addressing the contagion. Four of high-profile personalities we see on television are retired generals, and they seem comfortable explaining an epidemic, which is the turf of medical health practitioners.
Opposition to this arrangement was spoken much louder recently when medical frontliners, accused by the head of state of encouraging revolution, came out with a jarring statement asking the State not to militarize health institutions by transformed them into a police garrison.
Fighting the infection is not about armed enemy invasion; the battle is against invisible enemies whose impact is best understood by those who have devoted their life to tracking infectious diseases. To fully understand the epidemic, medical health specialists have correctly partnered with scientists and mathematicians in understanding the behavior of the virus.
While it can be argued that the role of the military should be limited to the execution of safeguards promoting public welfare, that argument is not applicable in emergent cases where the issues being deconstructed are about virus, vaccine, medicine, contamination, and health.
In the fight to contain the pandemic that is going haywire, this country does not need more cartoon characters to make our fight look funny. By adding more layers to the IATF makeup, such as appointing czars, the State has further muddled the mission to bring down the menace.
We understand the logic behind the involvement of law enforcers in an epidemic. But their role should only be exclusive to functions strictly outside the medical milieu. Leave the doctors to fight the menace and to report the daily developments, and the scientists and theoreticians to graph and compute the trajectory of the scourge.
