Read on TwitterToday, I read about the DPWH planning to build a breakwater to “prevent” the further deterioration of the dolomite beach. A DENR undersecretary even confidently claimed the impossibility of the sand being washed away. The “impossibility”.
Yesterday, I read about this woman who was thinking about taking her covid-positive sister home because they could no longer pay the mounting hospital bill. She said she made the same decision 3 years ago, when she took her mother home from the hospital for the same reason.
Her mother deteriorated under home care and died on the way back to the hospital because they lacked medical equipment at home. The decision haunts her to this day, when it’s her sister’s turn to play tug of war with death.
In a pandemic, you would think that it would be a non-issue to direct most, if not all, public funds to provide medical care and all kinds of assistance to our people. It’s not rocket science. It’s not even morally confounding. We all know it is the right thing to do.
But here we are, about to throw money into the waves in Roxas Boulevard, instead of spending it to save lives and alleviate suffering.
A government agency is planning to use public funds, not to address the pandemic that has killed more than one and a half million people worldwide, but to attempt to preserve a project so ill-conceived that it contradicts the most fundamental scientific principles.
It is catastrophic that this pandemic is not showing any signs of letting up or disappearing in the near future.
But it is even more devastating to watch our people die lonely and agonizing deaths because policymakers choose pride, greed, and irrationality over compassion and common sense.
