Philippines strict lockdown, PSA death statistics

Philippines having the strictest lockdown policies in the world
July 28, 2020

The Philippines has the strictest lockdown policies perhaps in the whole world. And this is the main reason for the terribly limping economy.

I got data from Google Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports as of July 21, 2020. The report covers six areas measuring the degree of restrictions from the baseline day, the median value from the 5‑week period Jan 3 – Feb 6, 2020. These areas are Retail and Recretation (R&R), Grocery and pharmacy, Parks, Transit stations, Workplaces, and Residential. For brevity purposes, I use the figures in only three – R&R that covers restaurants, malls, libraries, museums, movie theaters; Transit that covers public transportation like buses, trains, taxi, jeepneys; and Workplaces for obvious reason.

GDP growth and contraction (negative change) data are added to show economic trend of countries. I arranged the countries on four blocks of major economies by region: ASEAN-6, rest of Asia-Pacific, North and South America, and Europe. Comparing the Philippines with these countries, the result is interesting, or depressing (see the table).

Sources: (1) Restrictions, https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/; (2) GDP growth, IMF WEO 2019;  Trading Economics.

Google likely does not trust China figures so it did not show restrictions data for that country.

For GDP growth decline from either full year or fourth quarter 2019 to first quarter 2020, the Philippines is second to China in having the steepest decline.

Many countries and governments imposed less restrictions, gave more freedom for their people while they manage the spread of the virus. In the process they have not unnecessarily choked their economies.

The results so far in Europe show that heavy lockdown countries and no-lockdown Sweden have similar flattening of death curves through time. If we keep that in mind, we should realize that we need to relax these strict and hysteric lockdowns. 

Meanwhile, a good article,
https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/sweden-the-one-chart-that-matters/ 

Open up the economy, wide and clear.
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PSA updated data on PH death statistics
August 1, 2020

Kudos to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) for updating the country's death statistics until June 2020. PSA Chief, the National Statistician and Civil Registrar General, is Dr. Dennis Mapa (BS Stat, MA Econ, MS Stat, PhD Econ, all from UP Diliman). Dennis is a friend and the last two weeks I was bugging him when they will release the updated PSA vital stats (births, deaths, marriages, etc). The death stats especially because of this persistent hysteria over the Wuhan virus -- that there are more diseases and deaths now because of the pandemic.

I often use PSA data in my BWorld column (GDP, inflation, employment, trade, deaths, etc.), Dennis sees it and he's very kind to update me on the death stats. Yesterday morning he pm me quickly after the numbers have been posted in their website. I thanked him for the heads up.

Now the data. Is the general assumption and belief that there are more deaths this year than in recent years, true?

Bad news for the pandemic hysteria movement and the hysterics, the answer is No. At least from these 2020 preliminary data below. The columns on variation or deviation from 2020 I just added and not in the PSA official excel file.

I also told Dennis that I'm interested on the (1) causes and (2) demographics of death stats, among others. He said that such breakdown will follow soon. Thanks bro.

As I argued in my some of my column on the Covid/Wuhan virus subject, people count only Covid cases and deaths but not hunger- and poverty-related sickness and deaths because of the indefinite, no timetable lockdowns. Metro Manila has been on GCQ (I call it General Colonel Quarantine) since about mid-May until at least August 15.

ALL the scary and hysteric scenarios of the pro-lockdown indefinitely "while cases remain high" groups are wrong. No massive deaths by tens or hundreds of thousands, no overwhelming of the country's healthcare system. There is only overwhelming alarm, panic and hysteria.

We should have ended this indefinite lockdown. Since end-April or May.