‘Medical populism’? Palace says science, data guide Duterte response to COVID-19 pandemic

MANILA, Philippines — Science and hard data are guiding the decisions of President Rodrigo Duterte in the country’s fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, Malacañang said Thursday, dismissing the “medical populism” style tag of an international medical journal on the Chief Executive.

“The President, together with the members of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF), has met the challenges of COVID-19 head-on, with science and hard data guiding the Chief Executive’s decisions and actions, contrary to the ‘medical populism’ leadership style issue raised by some quarters,” Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque said in a statement.

Roque issued the statement after The Lancet ranked the Philippines 66th out of 91 countries in terms of suppressing the spread of the coronavirus.

The study pointed to Duterte’s “medical populism” approach as among the reasons for the country’s dismal ranking.

According to the journal, medical populism is “simplifying the pandemic by downplaying its impacts or touting easy solutions or treatments, spectacularizing their responses to crisis, forging divisions between the ‘people’ and dangerous ‘others,’ and making medical knowledge claims to support the above.”

But Roque, who is also the official IATF mouthpiece, claimed that the government has put in place “concrete interventions” to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, such as the ramping up of the country’s testing capacity, enhancing contact tracing efforts, and scaling up of local health system capacity, especially for community isolation and critical care.

“The national government’s approach is whole-of-government and whole-of-society, where every sector from public health to economics has been consulted, to ensure that the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is addressed in our National Action Plan,” the Place official said.

As of Wednesday, there are 295,591 confirmed COVID-19 cases in the Philippines—the highest in Southeast Asia. Of the total cases, 231,373 have recovered, while 5,091 have died.

JE