It must be very hard for President Duterte to find himself having to make a decision on an issue where the slightest miscalculation could lead to catastrophic consequences, and with no one to blame.
Like autocrats whose experience at ruling has mostly been carved in premodern settings, Mr. Duterte trusts too much in his own instincts. He has shown little patience for the kind of systematic thinking and rational decision-making that underpins modern statecraft.
That would have made for a concise and straightforward presentation. But the President could not control his need to say something after every report by a member of the Inter-Agency Task Force. He saw every pause as an opportunity to launch another rambling and repetitive monologue on a pet issue, sometimes to the point of losing his breath in the middle of unrestrained cursing and threats to declare his “own” brand of martial law.
I don’t quite understand how these things are arranged. But I’m sure Dr. Lagmay would have gladly yielded the microphone to an epidemiologist or a public health specialist, if there was one in the room. He is, after all, an earth scientist, and, in the mass media, he is better known as an expert on geological hazards.
The numbers for COVID-19 deaths, at first glance, may seem unproblematic. But that is assuming that a proper diagnosis of death from COVID-19 is made and is duly reported to the DOH in every instance, no matter where it happens. I understand that the DOH subjects these reports to a validation process. Where neither a test nor a clinical diagnosis nor an autopsy is performed, it would not be easy to arrive at a clear determination of the cause of death.
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