An area under “total lockdown” (Image credit: rappler.com)
Lockdowns everywhere
The lockdown discourse has become ubiquitous, especially in current affairs and social media. In fact, ‘lockdown’ and ‘quarantine’ have been designated word of the year 2020 by Collins and Cambridge dictionaries, respectively.
Talk about restrictions on travel, curfew, and onsite capacity limits are particularly salient in countries that, unfortunately, continue to battle waves of the modern-day virus that does not even need to be named. The word ‘pandemic’ used in the present context has become synonymous to the still-evolving COVID-19 virus that started plaguing the world in early 2020.
Less straightforward, however, is the nuanced vocabulary that has been created around the notion of lockdown.
What does “lockdown” mean?
Different nation-state governments have developed their own nomenclatures for public health safety protocols.
In the Philippines, the Department of Health introduced the phrase ‘community quarantine’ (CQ) to refer to area-specific mobility restrictions intended to reduce virus transmission.
Depending on the severity of cases in different parts of the archipelagic state, the government may differentially impose four levels of CQ—enhanced CQ, modified enhanced CQ, general CQ, or modified general CQ. The lowest level is termed ‘new normal’ which is defined as the situation where, with significant reduction in the threat of virus transmission, only minimum public health standards will remain enforced. This, however, still involves practicing new routines and habits, such as mask wearing and avoiding large gatherings.
Using these terminologies and understanding what they mean were part of my adjustment since managing to fly back to Manila just when restrictions were beginning to tighten in Sydney.
You need a solid level of English and literacy to understand these lockdown rules and alert levels
The effectiveness of these protocols and their implementation, however, has been questioned in light of the still increasing number of reported new cases of COVID-19 infection (Pajaron & Vasquez, 2021).
The latest response by the Department of Health is to introduce new quarantine vocabulary: ‘granular lockdown’ which refers to micro-level quarantine for critical areas that have a surge in COVID-19 cases. Beginning September 16, 2021, 57 areas in the National Capital Region were put under granular lockdown. This means individuals staying in houses, residential buildings, streets, blocks, villages, or barangays that have been identified as ‘critical areas’ are forced to strictly stay indoors for 14 consecutive days. As affected households absolutely cannot leave their residence, the local government units and social welfare department are in charge of sending them food, and military officials are stationed in the areas to ensure compliance.
Along with this new quarantine protocol is a new five-level alert system, which provisionally takes the place of the CQs. A description of the activities that are (dis)allowed in each level is provided by explainers circulated in social media. Information campaign tools, like the ones in the image, however, do not necessarily guarantee public comprehension or compliance.
Are Filipinos deliberately breaking the rules?
Indubitably, the construction of such public health protocols and nomenclature is necessary. But it is difficult to perceive their effectiveness in light of the continued spread of the virus.
This persistent problem has been blamed partly on people who allegedly, deliberately ignore the rules. Colloquially labelled pasaway [naughty], this group of delinquents includes those living below the poverty line, who need to fend for themselves on a daily basis in order to survive. Between August 21 and September 15, 2021 alone, the Philippine National Police reported 224,626 violators in Metro Manila and 1,153,833 in the nearby provinces of Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal.
These monitored lockdown violations rival the reported statistics of new COVID-19 cases and is publicly chastised with threats of brute force. Such negative, even violent discourse is seen as further enlarging the power wielded by the government over the public that is imagined as uncooperative, irresponsible, and needing more discipline (Hapal, 2021).
An area under granular lockdown (Image credit: Philippine News Agency)
Whether it is true that more than a million Filipinos are deliberate delinquents is highly debatable. But an even more serious question is—What happens to violators? Reports say curfew violators have been arrested, locked up in dog cages, left to suffer the intense heat of the midday sun, and threatened or actually shot dead. The severity of punishment for non-compliance raises questions of human rights—Does violating public health rules justify violation of people’s basic human rights?
At the same time, it raises an important concern on the comprehensibility of regulations because comprehension precedes compliance. In other words, is it right to punish people for not following policies, which they cannot understand in the first place?
The gap between policy and compliance
Without intending to diminish the value of civil obedience, I argue that the problem of ambiguity in pandemic regulations represents a critical gap between policy and compliance.
As Professor Lawrence Solan of Brooklyn Law School explained in the 1st International Conference on Forensic Linguistics (organized by the University of Santo Tomas – English Department on 18 September 2021), the seemingly simple pattern of reading the law and then obeying it is actually not that simple because it is not always easy to understand what policy requires. This issue presents an argument for the localized translation of public health information.
While multilingual health information materials have been deployed in the Philippines at the beginning of the pandemic, there is less known about the multilingual translation of lockdown policies, which are largely in English, as shown in the sample explainers.
Harsh punishments for non-compliance with lockdown rules (Image credit: Human Rights Watch)
Globally, the effect of linguistic ambiguity in pandemic regulations include what Professor Richard Powell of Nihon University reported as ‘pandemic confusion’ and ‘alert fatigue.’ As also experienced in France, Australia, the US, among others, shifting and ambiguous lockdown rules are successfully engendering confusion, making compliance extra challenging globally.
But with more deliberate and glaring social injustices tied to the discourse of compliance, the current situation of the Philippines demonstrates how policy ambiguity can be (ab)used as a power tool and can reinforce inequalities (Kurnosov & Varfolomeeva, 2020), especially those related to differences in the ability to comprehend constantly changing lockdown names and guidelines.
References
Hapal, K. (2021). The Philippines’ COVID-19 response: Securitising the pandemic and disciplining the pasaway. Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 40(2), 224-244. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/1868103421994261
Kurnosov, D., & Varfolomeeva, A. (2020). Constructing the not-so-new normal: Ambiguity and familiarity in governmental regulations of intimacies during the pandemic. Anthropology in Action, 27(2), 28. doi:https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2020.270204
Pajaron, M. C., & Vasquez, G. N. A. (2021). Re: How effective is community quarantine in the Philippines? A quasi-experimental analysis. Message posted to http://hdl.handle.net/10419/230315
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I think this post captures many realities. It reminds me that English is owned, hence “Englishes,” and that it can be manipulated to manipulate minds. However, the most profound perhaps is that this post reminds me of realities beyond English, realities that can actually be seen so easily as in on TV or on the streets. Perhaps it is true that English poses problems, but people’s will itself or better yet, like what’s stated here, harsh realities attributed to the imperfections of our society (such as low income and the no-work-no-pay practice) also play roles. Indeed, English may pose problems, but there are other factors to consider beyond that language.
Indeed, an insightful blog article that mirrored the realities of numerous Filipinos when the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world. Thank you for this, Doc Pia!
“Comprehension precedes compliance.”
It is undoubtedly true that there are Filipinos who deliberately ignore health protocols but on the flip side, there are also those who are challenged and limited to fully comprehend these quarantine restrictions especially that at first, most of these were communicated in a foreign language – in this case, it’s the English language. Before the COVID-19 pandemic started, reading comprehension is already one of the weakest points of most Filipinos that is according to the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The reported incidents of quarantine violations should be an opportunity to educate the Filipino people on how to better understand and comply. Corporal punishments are mere band-aid solutions to the real problem which is better understanding of quarantine restrictions.
In this pandemic, the virus is not only the enemy but also injustice and inequality among people. This blog sheds light on these important societal issues that should be continuously investigated on. Congratulations on this, Doc Pia!
Reference:
San Juan, R. (2019). Philippines lowest in reading comprehension among 79 countries. Philstar. Retrieved from https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2019/12/03/1974002/philippines-lowest-reading-comprehension-among-79-countries
The ambiguity of the lockdown rules in the Philippines might have contributed to the consistent rise of Covid-19 cases during the peak of the pandemic from 2020 to 2021. The marginalized sector or the indigent Filipino citizens, who have little to no educational attainment, find it hard to comprehend the lockdown rules, especially the differences among the four levels of Community Quarantine (enhanced CQ, modified enhanced CQ, general CQ, or modified general CQ). Furthermore, most of the information and educational materials on Covid-19 were written in English or Filipino, failing to recognize the reality that the Philippines have a variety of languages. I agree with what Dr. Pia wrote that there is a social injustice present in the implementation of Covid-19 lockdown rules that definitely made the lives of the marginalized sector even harder during the quarantine lockdown.