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Watts Q1M1W1

The document discusses the Philippine government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It argues the government took a partial thinking approach rather than holistic thinking. Specifically, it imposed harsh lockdown measures through the Inter-Agency Task Force that needlessly damaged the economy by closing entire regions rather than just infected areas. This caused widespread unemployment and business closures. The document claims the government should have taken a more targeted approach, like Vietnam, focusing quarantines only on infected communities while keeping the economy open. The severe lockdowns were a mistake that will negatively impact the country for years to come.

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Sekora Lee
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37 views

Watts Q1M1W1

The document discusses the Philippine government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It argues the government took a partial thinking approach rather than holistic thinking. Specifically, it imposed harsh lockdown measures through the Inter-Agency Task Force that needlessly damaged the economy by closing entire regions rather than just infected areas. This caused widespread unemployment and business closures. The document claims the government should have taken a more targeted approach, like Vietnam, focusing quarantines only on infected communities while keeping the economy open. The severe lockdowns were a mistake that will negatively impact the country for years to come.

Uploaded by

Sekora Lee
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Watts, Kimie Lee S.

September 24, 2021


G12 – Aristarchus Philosophy
Q1M1W1: What is Philosophy?
Instruction: From the given image of your LAS, write what can you say about the 2
pictures in relation to the thinking philosophy and as applied to the government's
response to our Covid crisis.

On the left, the polygonal dice represents holistic thinking which means looking
at each component part and how it relates to one another to create a cohesive whole.
It emphasizes focusing on the bigger picture, the totality, rather than finer details or
some aspects only. And the dice also has written on it all the perspectives you can
use to analyze things. You can look at things Economically, scientifically, politically,
psychologically, artistically, and so on. You use all those perspectives to create a
whole and understand the meaning, purpose, and workings of the system.
In contrast to that, on the left we have a magnifying glass focusing on a
specific part of the whole representing partial thinking. Partial thinking focuses on just
some aspects of the whole in such a way that the whole is overlooked or discounted.
It studies a particular detail.

For the response towards COVID-19, I believe that the Philippine government
had looked too much into partial thinking and lacked in holistic thinking. Although
there’s nothing wrong with thinking in the present, they had applied that on the wrong
situation. They tried to cover up a wound without inspecting and disinfecting it
beforehand. Treating it with the wrong medications and procedures. therefore, it now
continues to grow severely infected and is almost impossible to treat. They could let
the health officials take over but, they now don’t have the resources as they had lost
so much in the reign of the IATF. It is now too late to turn back and remake their
decisions. They have no choice but to, in a way, cope with whatever they have left.
They had dug the grave of their own nation. Businesses collapsed and
unemployment soared. The quality of education has dropped (not the teachers’ fault)
and in turn, students had “dropped” education. So much has gone wrong that it had
drowned the rights. What we thought was a temporary problem, had turned into long-
term suffering. The way the government handled COVID-19 will not only affect the
people of today, but also future generations.
Though this could have been avoided had the Inter-Agency Task Force on
Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) not prescribed such harsh quarantine
measures. Granted, a level of lockdown was necessary to contain the spread of the
virus, but the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) and even the General
Community Quarantine (GCQ) were too severe and needlessly destroyed parts of the
economy. It relegated millions to unemployment and drove thousands of MSMEs to
insolvency causing people to become even more desperate to get out and find a
sustainable living during this pandemic.
If the IATF took the advice of the business sector, it would have adopted
Vietnam’s strategy. Vietnam addressed the pandemic by immediately declaring a
travel ban on China. It embarked on aggressive contact tracing and focused its
quarantine efforts only on the hotspots — the very streets, buildings, and
neighborhoods where those infected reside. Meanwhile, it allowed the economy to
keep operating including all facets of commerce, factories, and services.
In contrast, the IATF prescribed a shot-gun approach to address the pandemic
in the Philippines. Instead of closing only the barangays where infections were
recorded, it chose to close the entire island of Luzon and key cities in the Visayas
and Mindanao. Its strategy consigned the large industries that provided millions of
jobs to the brink of death. It caused our economy to spiral into recession.
The militaristic quarantine measures that Health Secretary Francisco Duque,
General Carlito Galvez, and the rest of the IATF put into play was a mistake. They did
more damage than good. Curiously, almost none of the members of the health and
economic departments are represented in the IATF, which is probably why Duque
and Galvez implemented their shotgun strategy without regard to the effects it would
have on the economy and overall health.
Unfortunately, President Rodrigo Duterte, who has the last say on the matter,
was not able to discern the faults in the IATF’s militaristic plan. Sadly, our jobless
countrymen and bankrupt MSMEs must bear the brunt of his lapse in judgement.

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