With the decision made in the very early morning of 18 August to revert to the General Community Quarantine (GCQ) in Metro Manila, we are again seeing social media light up with polarized views on whether we should prioritize the health of citizens or the health of the economy. Presented as a binary choice and wrapped in understandable emotion, it represents a conundrum of considerable significance to policy makers. It may take more than the wisdom of Solomon to balance the legitimate concerns of exhausted health workers and those who are seeing their livelihoods vanish before their eyes. But need it be so? Can more rigorous analysis of at least the key numbers underlining an issue of such importance help make an informed decision?
As the first application of UNDP’s new Pintig (heartbeat in Filipino) data Lab, we worked with the Ateneo de Manila University Department of Economics’ FASSSTER socioeconomic modelling working group to take a closer look at the critical figures that could help resolve what we consider to be a false dichotomy between the economy and saving lives. We adopted a multivariate approach, combining health data with a socioeconomic analysis of estimated costs in terms of lives, livelihoods, and revenues. This data was then used to project the health and socioeconomic impacts on Metro Manila under different quarantine scenarios over the period of 4 to 31 August 2020.
