Do you still belong to the middle class?

When I got my senior citizen cash gift, I was very thankful that the gift did not make any distinction whether senior citizens are high, middle or low class. This is why I took issue at what Sen. Cynthia Villar said that “the middle class should not be receiving assistance from the government's social amelioration program (SAP) amid the COVID-19 pandemic.” She claims that 18 million target beneficiaries of the emergency subsidy represent 82% of the estimated 22 million Filipino families in the Philippines.  She issued this statement during a hybrid hearing of the Senate Committee of the Whole where she said that those people have work even during the lockdown.

Sen. Villar’s statement was immediately refuted by Acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua who said that the 22 million families being cited by Sen. Villar is from 2015 data which had to be updated to meet the actual needs in the present. Gads, that was data collated five long years ago. All the time, I thought that Sen. Villar was one of the senators who had a better research group than the other senators. Apparently, she isn’t well-versed on this issue.

Mind you, only last April, President Rodrigo Duterte approved a P51-billion wage subsidy program, which has been branded by the government as an aid to the "middle class" employed by 1.6 million small businesses in the country. Meanwhile, I would like to believe that many people who claim to belong to the middle class sector are now rethinking their positions.

When these people thought that they still belonged in the middle class, they had very good jobs and in this part of the country. Chance are, they belonged to the tourism industry, which unfortunately has been badly hit in the last three months due to this COVID-19. With the Cebu economy in the doldrums, I’m sure that people who claim to belong to the middle class can no longer make this claim today.

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All my faithful readers have know that I’ve always asked the Department of Health (DOH) in Region 7 headed by Director Dr. Jaime Bernadas or Dr. Daisy Villa of Cebu City Health Office what really is the fatality or death rate in Cebu City. So far I only hear a deafening silence. Then yesterday, CDN Digital suddenly released a statement from Dr. Bernadas, who said that other illnesses such as dengue and tuberculosis even infected and killed more people than COVID-19. Now this is a report that I’ve always wanted to know so we could compare the death or fatality rate of the COVID-19 to the other illnesses that always plague us in Cebu.

In its earlier report just on dengue fever alone, the DOH in Central Visayas collated this information that in Cebu City, there were 1,142 cases with a total of 6 deaths from January 1 to May 9, 2020. Mandaue City had 359 cases and one death, while Talisay City had 156 cases and zero deaths. Lapu-Lapu City had 689 cases with zero deaths. Since we went on ECQ, Cebu City had 11 deaths due to COVID-19 and just on the dengue fever alone, there were already six deaths and it is not even dengue fever season yet. You wait by June when the rainy season comes and the dreaded dengue fever would reappear in Central Visayas.

No, the DOH did not issue any fatality rate for people having tuberculosis. If you added this figures up, you will see that there are far more fatalities just from dengue fever and tuberculosis than from COVID-19. So if our local officials are thinking of extending our ECQ, they ought to rethink this scheme because in my book, there is now a bigger need to restore our failed economy. In short, Dr. Bernadas was telling us that COVID-19 isn’t something we should not be afraid of.

At this point, allow me to reiterate to the officials of the DOH in Central Visayas to tell us the truth as to our fatality rate in the year 2019 so we can more or less find out what is the highest illness that causes death here in Central Visayas. Then we can compare it to the fatality rate of COVID-19.

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