Last Easter Sunday, April 4, media reported that Marikina Second District Representative Stella Quimbo had called on the Department of Health (DOH) to consider enforcing lockdowns on households that have at least one member who is positive for COVID-19.

The good lady Representative astutely noted the government’s plan to extend the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) would be useless unless the DOH revises its approach to controlling the pandemic. Said Quimbo “A more localized lockdown needs to be implemented at the smallest possible unit – the household, coupled with mass testing, diligent contact tracing,and adequate financial assistance.

In other words, Rep Quimbo is now basically calling for data-driven granular lockdowns truly sensitive to people’s welfare concerns, and I agree with her.

In fact, I already suggested the need for such in another online column last year. But apparently, to paraphrase a line from a meme in social media, what is essential is invisible to the IATF.

Wide-area lockdowns like this NCR-bubble thing did not work last year and will most probably not work again especially without the needed supportive programs I already mentioned.

Last July 12, I came out with an opinion piece here titled “A Pathology,” where I argued that there is a certain pathology in the operation of the Philippine political system as a supposedly democratic one. As an example of this pathology, I underscored the congressional bullying then against ABS-CBN. Bullying, for how else can one describe what happened to ABS-CBN even as we began to face the very serious threat of Covid-19 last year?

A reiteration of my point then seems in order. I wrote then: “If [our] Congress were not “pathological,[it] should have been conducting long, passionate hearings [then] to help craft better policies [on] the pandemic and even anticipate the post-Covid scenario. They should, at least, be doing diligently the oversight function of looking into how the [first] Bayanihan Heal as One (BAHO) law was implemented and how this creature called the IATF and Malacanang have been performing. But where were those Congressional inquiries and cross examinations of, at least, IATF leaders? As in the hearings for the ABS CBN franchise, “…where are the equally scathing remarks in public hearings on how the new loans of this country are being used or have been used?”

“Still, we need to ask: How have the billions in loans and donations for the Philippines been used? This is a question we all would like answered. I am sure we are more interested in this than on whether someone can properly recite the Philippines’ oath of allegiance [as discussed in a Congressional hearing of the ABS-CBN franchise issue]. Moreover, how do we continue to battle Covid… after months of virtual failure? IATF’s strategy is still unclear.”

Let me mention here as well that I concluded that piece with these words: “The initial spread of Covid is a health issue, but its spread as a pandemic has made it a political concern. We have to fight it as a disease using medical science, but—sans a cure especially a vaccine—we can only fully contain it by managing the movement and behavior of people; hence, the need for politics.”

And there lies the rub. The very real and more virulent pathology now is with our polity,

Now that the vaccines are with us, my words from a year ago continue to ring true.

In the face of thousands of deaths now due to Covid, the miscreants of Malacañang can spin things anyway they want as they are wont to do, but I do not see how they will escape the harsh judgement of the world and of history. They utterly failed the Filipino people in this pandemic.

Since a year ago, officials and apologists of the government have been labelling us Filipinos as “pasaway” and blaming the public for the spread of the virus.

They are still playing that tune now. After a year of borrowing failed policies?

It is time to address the real pathology. Let us now do science and not just health science. It is time for policy science. Time to now listen to systematic and data-driven policy thinkers like Representative Quimbo who, allow me to note, was Valedictorian of her graduating class in UP in 1991. Time to stop the deeper pathology.