24 March 2020
Confusion. 24-hour curfew, one Metro Manila city administration announces. 24-hour curfew for senior citizens and kids, another announces. Other than these, the public does not get implementing rules and regulation.
How can any household get food supplies? It looks like the assumption is either that the city administration involved is supplying everyone or that every household already has enough supplies to last the lockdown.
Suppose some senior citizen lives alone? What happens?
When one is caught violating, whether out of ignorance or out of need, he gets incarcerated? What law? Where? In prison with lowly criminals where there is no possibility of social distancing whatsoever? This may be practically a death sentence for some. People get incarcerated. People get infected from exposure in the prison. Some may die. Prisons we know are all burdened with lack of space.
It looks like officials today, whether national or local, have no clear decision procedure to meet the challenges faced now. None which can be used to predict based on data on hand. No capacity to see the future and adapt accordingly.
Officials that we have in many places have come to have their positions out of simply showing the administration how solid they are as supporters no matter what. Quite a handful of them through trolling with their blogs on social media. They get better treatment than some nun who has spent a lifetime helping the poor; she gets deported. Better than journalists calling attention to human rights abuses; they get banned or get deported. The rule is support the president no matter what, you get position and support you wish for. Be it for trolls or generals.
Whiz kids run Project Moses themselves; they have been at it since January 20. They observe patterns emerging out of the news coming out of China. All about Wuhan coronavirus. They identify issues. Issues pertaining to the capability of Philippine hospitals. They brain-storm the matter through sleepless nights — so many nights despite struggle to keep their start-up afloat. Quietly, they lay down solutions they think they can deliver. They ask health professionals to vet their ideas. Then, coding, iterations, brain-storming, more sleepless nights.
Meanwhile, us advisers, boomers, we ring the bell, call attention to their work. (Team lawyer is originator of project name, also a boomer.)
Turns out, our generation has a different mental model. We are told by colleagues, go ask Google instead. Mostly, no one is interested.
A lady octogenarian founder and president of a hospital finally responds. She is stopped on her tracks by her board of boomers. Same with the DOH, run by boomers.
February 7, the kids, already in the thick of wrestling with the technological challenges. We stumble upon a priest who used to herd us as activists during the Martial Law years. He too is interested. Turns out he is now president of some nationwide church media network.
Rest is going to be history.
Not that the whiz kids behind Project Moses want any financial benefit out this. Not paid, they keep spending their own. The whiz kids are really simply so happy creating tools that can help everyone. So happy innovating. Inventing.
Whiz kids who run Bridge360 are proud of what they do. Better yet, they are proud to share what they know and what they have. Bet my two hands and two legs, they are not thinking of getting some juicy position in government.
Trolls and generals in charge. Whiz kids at Bridge360. Apples and oranges.
No going back to the old ways now.
(DOH central office technical staff members have finally recommended, April 2021, the use of Project Moses; this in preparation of surge of cases before the end of this year.)
Project Moses banner designed by Bea Trishtan Garcia
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