A Crisis Like No Other: 100 Days In Quarantine

The economic divide in our society can be observed between people who currently don't have jobs or food and people who are getting fat, bored, anxious, and sad. When some of my friends told me that they were fine with the quarantine because it allows them to work from home, I felt like they were very disconnected from from what is happening to people like food peddlers and jeep drivers.

People who work for the government (perhaps because they are the least financially affected by the quarantine) also do not show empathy with their new and hastily-crafted policies like distance learning. But to be fair, this is a crisis like no other and there simply are no precedents for us to say that this or that was what should have been done. However, I am pretty sure that our government officials (from their gilded cages) do have our well-being in mind. They only have to look at the French revolution to know what is in store for them if they do not act quickly.

When the newly appointed chief for government response on Coronavirus in Cebu reported that he was looking at how to deal with this virus by reading about the Spanish flu, I felt like he was on the right track. Sure, he made a mistake in saying that the country was under the Philippine Commonwealth Government at that time, but it's not a big deal. He simply probably meant that we were under US rule instead of the Commonwealth Government which was formed more than ten years later. I also tried to research on articles about the economic effects of the Spanish flu on the Philippines and what measures were taken to mitigate its effects but surprisingly, there is a dearth of articles online about that subject. Maybe it's because there were no heroes from that crisis. The nursing profession, I believe at that time was not yet what it is today. And of course, so many people died (80,000 Filipinos)! So maybe the reason the reason we hardly talk about that episode in our history was because we lost that war and we chose to just forget about that horrific event.

Today, economists no longer expect a quick economic recovery and the IMF is calling the economic fallout from the great lock down as a crisis like no other.

A good example of a V-shaped economic recovery was the economic recovery (if not boom) that took place in Zamboanga city after the 2013 siege. It lasted for more than a month but the perpetrators were all apprehended in the end and victory was very decisive that today, you would scarcely think that it ever happened. In contrast, prior to that victory, life in Zamboanga city was constantly interrupted by bomb threats. Every now and then, people would tell you not to go to crowded places which really hurt the economy.

Like terrorism, the effect of this virus will be a decrease on people's appetite to do things such as eating out and watching a movie or buying big ticket items such as a car or a house. The economy is very much tied to people's moods and outlook. Whenever people are scared, they simply do not like to consume.

A quick recovery would have been possible had the threat of the virus disappeared after going on a lock down. I think that when the lock down was introduced, people were expecting that at some point the government would declare the country free from the virus, lift all restrictions, and life goes back to the way it was. But 100 days since the quarantine took effect and we are seeing disruptions in everyday life such as certain buildings or areas being locked down because of a sudden and rapid increase in positive cases.