Philippines is again #1 this time in Covid-19 cases

In a country so obsessed with superlatives, here is the news: the Philippines is Number 1 in Southeast Asia in terms of the number of Covid-19 cases, new cases per day in the past few days, and active cases.

Do we hear a drumroll and congratulations?

Of course, instances like this should not be a case for celebration. Unfortunately, our penchant for being “the most” is bringing us to nowhere but demise. Instead of focusing on addressing the problem, we love to build our castles in the air and rest on it and, if these are dungeons, just wait for the time to pass us by or worse, spin it just like what Spokesman Harry Roque did Friday. In defending why the country outranked Indonesia in terms of Covid-19 cases, the Presidential Spokesman said that Indonesia had more cases but it had lower testing rates than the Philippines.

“It means, because we intensified our testing, it is not true that we have more cases than Indonesia. Indonesia just doesn’t know who are going around with the disease”, Roque said in Pilipino and without data to back up his claim.

It should be noted that Roque was earlier lambasted for expressing a congratulatory remark for beating the University of the Philippines (UP) prediction on the number of Covid-cases in June. The remark painted the

Roque painted UP as the enemy when the latter projected 40,000 Coronavirus cases by end of June. Hence, the blame appeared to have been placed on UP rather than in fighting the virus. On June 29, the number of Covid cases was 36,438. As Roque triumphantly said:

“Today is the last day na pala! Ano bang sinasabi ko? Wala na po, panalo na pala tayo! (What was I saying? Disregard that. We already won!) We beat the UP prediction po! We beat it! Congratulations, Philippines!”

With the latest figures, we are missing Roque’s congratulatory remarks. Well, he is still busy dragging others to the pit just to show that the current administration is doing well. With that, we can add another item to our “F… It List” — we are number one in terms of crab mentality, as well as number one in terms of spins.

Pathetic!