December 7, 2020

No Nationwide Lockdown During The Holidays,

Officials Say As They Slam Fake News
Authorities urged the public not to peddle false information as the Philippines is battling
a public health crisis.

Malacañang, the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), the Metro
Manila Development Authority (MMDA) and the municipality of Pateros clarified on
Sunday, Dec. 6, that the government has no plan to impose a nationwide lockdown from
Dec. 23 to Jan. 3 amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Officials urged the public not to peddle false information as the Philippines is battling a
public health crisis.

“Fake news,” presidential spokesman Harry Roque and DILG Secretary Eduardo Año
said in separate text messages.

Over the weekend, text messages advising the public to prepare for a "possible"
declaration of a nationwide enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) circulated, almost a
week after President Duterte announced the quarantine classifications for this month.

ECQ is the strictest quarantine scenario wherein public transportation services are
suspended and very few sectors like healthcare and food production and distribution
can operate.

The text messages claimed the lockdown would be implemented "to prevent possible
increase” in coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) cases during the “holiday season.”

Año stressed there is no proposal for a return to nationwide or city-wide lockdowns and
that there is no reason for the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) for the Management of
Emerging Infectious to discuss the matter because it is baseless.

DILG Underscretary Jonathan Malaya also said cities have not submitted any formal
request to impose a lockdown over their jurisdictions, particularly in Manila.

He pointed out that city mayors are no longer allowed to impose city-wide lockdowns
but only granular or limited ones over barangays or streets.

The decision to enforce nationwide or city-wide lockdowns falls within the jurisdiction of
the IATF, Malaya said.
MMDA general manager Jojo Garcia and Pateros Mayor Miguel Ponce III also
dismissed the text messages as fake news.

The officials told the public to wait for official announcements on any changes regarding
quarantine classifications.

The DILG also reminded the Filipinos to strictly follow health and safety protocols to
prevent a surge in COVID-19 transmission this Christmas season.

IATF vice chairman and Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles called on the public to act
responsibly during the pandemic.

"Know the truth. Do not spread fake news especially during this time. Let us continue to
be responsible to ourselves and to our families," he said.

Año likewise asked the people to refrain from sharing unverified information to avoid
creating panic among the public.

Restituto Padilla, spokesman of the National Task Force Against COVID-19, reminded
the public to verify information they receive with authorities or trusted organizations.

"Let us not be instruments of fake news distribution," Padilla said in a text message.

Metro Manila, Batangas, Iloilo City, Tacloban City, Lanao del Sur, Iligan, Davao City,
and Davao del Norte will be under general community quarantine (GCQ) until the end of
the year while the rest of the country will be under the most lenient modified GCQ.

Last month, health officials said they are preparing for a possible surge in COVID-19
infections after the holidays and have appealed to the public to continue complying with
health and safety standards like proper hygiene, wearing of face shields and face
masks, and physical distancing.

In an interview with “The Chiefs” on One News / TV 5 on Wednesday night, Dec. 2,
Department of Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the decision to
impose a lockdown would be based on the number of COVID-19 cases in an area and
the capacity of its health system to admit more patients.

She warned citizens that the government could be forced to reimpose a strict lockdown
after the Christmas season if COVID-19 cases overwhelm the country’s healthcare
system.
Vergeire, however, said another lockdown would be the last option for the government
to control the surge and transmission of COVID-19 nationwide.

“When I say we assess the situation, it is not just the number that we talk about, we talk
about the capacity of the health system,” Vergeire pointed out.

Last August, President Duterte decided to revert the National Capital Region, Cavite,
Bulacan and Rizal to modified ECQ or MECQ after medical frontliners called for a two-
week lockdown to prevent the collapse of the healthcare system.

During that time, Vergeire said almost all hospitals in Metro Manila were full and
patients were just accommodated in tents as COVID cases soared dramatically.

However, Vergeire stressed that the possibility of lockdown is yet to be put on the table
for discussion.

“But there are still no discussions on these restrictions and all. We are just trying to plug
the possibility that there might be a surge because of this holiday season,” she noted.

Vergeire said the whole country, including Metro Manila at this time is “low risk,” but
there are several areas that the DOH is closely monitoring for rising COVID cases and
hospital capacity nearing the “danger zone.”

(https://www.onenews.ph/no-nationwide-lockdown-during-the-holidays-officials-say-as-
they-slam-fake-news)
NAME: Lovely R. Salceda

GRADE AND SECTION: HUMSS 12-B

REFLECTION PAPER:

No Nationwide Lockdown During The

Holidays, Officials Say As They Slam Fake
News

Are you one of the them who are still believing on a nationwide lockdown during
the holiday seasons? Are you still a kind of person who are panicking about this? So if
you are this kind of person, let me clarify to you first the reason or the real reason and
the reactions of others who are apart of our government, but let us know first the
meaning of nationwide, lockdown, holliday season, and fake news for you to have a
short review about my reaction paper.

Nationwide? It is refers to or covers the whole country. A nationwide shortage

of wheat would affect everyone in every single state occurring or extending throughout a
country or nation.( https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/nationwide).

Lockdown? A lockdown is a requirement for people to stay where they are,

usually due to specific risks to themselves or to others if they can move freely. The term
"stay-at-home" or "shelter-in-place" is often used for lockdowns that affect an area,
rather than specific locations.
The term is used for a prison protocol that usually prevents people, information or
objects from leaving an area. The protocol can usually only be initiated by someone in a
position of authority.
A lockdown can also be used to protect people inside a facility or, for example, a
computing system, from a threat or other external event. In buildings doors leading
outside are usually locked so that no person may enter or exit. A full lockdown usually
means that people must stay where they are and may not enter or exit a building or
rooms within it, needing to go to the nearest place designated safe if not already in such
a place.( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockdown)
Holliday seasons? "Christmas season" redirects here. For other uses, see Christmas
season (disambiguation).

"Merry Christmas" redirects here. For other uses, see Merry Christmas

(disambiguation).

The Christmas season, also called the holiday season (often simply called the
holidays), or the festive season, is an annually recurring period recognized in many
Western and other countries that is generally considered to run from November to early
January. It is defined as incorporating at least Christmas, New Year, and sometimes
various other holidays and festivals. It also is associated with a period of shopping
which comprises a peak season for the retail sector (the "Christmas (or holiday)
shopping season") and a period of sales at the end of the season (the "January sales").
Christmas window displays and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies when trees
decorated with ornaments and light bulbs are illuminated are traditions in many areas.

In the denominations of Western Christianity, the term "Christmas season" is

considered synonymous with Christmastide, which runs from December 25 (Christmas
Day) to January 5 (Twelfth Night or Epiphany Eve), popularly known as the 12 Days of
Christmas. However, as the economic impact involving the anticipatory lead-up to
Christmas Day grew in America and Europe into the 19th and 20th centuries, the term
"Christmas season" began to become synonymous instead with the traditional Christian
Advent season, the period observed in Western Christianity from the fourth Sunday
before Christmas Day until Christmas Day itself. The term "Advent calendar" continues
to be widely known in Western parlance as a term referring to a countdown to
Christmas Day from the beginning of December, although in retail the countdown to
Christmas usually begins at the end of the summer season, and beginning of
September.

Beginning in the mid-20th century, as the Christian-associated Christmas holiday

and liturgical season, in some circles, became increasingly commercialized and central
to American economics and culture while religio-multicultural sensitivity rose, generic
references to the season that omitted the word "Christmas" became more common in
the corporate and public sphere of the United States, which has caused a semantics
controversy that continues to the present. By the late 20th century, the Jewish holiday
of Hanukkah and the new African American cultural holiday of Kwanzaa began to be
considered in the U.S. as being part of the "holiday season", a term that as of 2013 has
become equally or more prevalent than "Christmas season" in U.S. sources to refer to
the end-of-the-year festive period. "Holiday season" has also spread in varying degrees
to Canada; however, in the United Kingdom and Ireland, the phrase "holiday season" is
not widely synonymous with the Christmas–New Year period, and is often instead
associated with summer holidays.
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_and_holiday_season)

Fake news? Fake news is false or misleading information presented as news. It

often has the aim of damaging the reputation of a person or entity, or making money
through advertising revenue. Media scholar Nolan Higdon has offered a more broad
definition of fake news as “false or misleading content presented as news and
communicated in formats spanning spoken, written, printed, electronic, and digital
communication.

Once common in print, the prevalence of fake news has increased with the rise
of social media, especially the Facebook News Feed. Political polarization, post-truth
politics, confirmation bias, and social media algorithms have been implicated in the
spread of fake news. It is sometimes generated and propagated by hostile foreign
actors, particularly during elections. The use of anonymously-hosted fake news
websites has made it difficult to prosecute sources of fake news for libel. In some
definitions, fake news includes satirical articles misinterpreted as genuine, and articles
that employ sensationalist or clickbait headlines that are not supported in the text.

Fake news can reduce the impact of real news by competing with it; a Buzzfeed
analysis found that the top fake news stories about the 2016 U.S. presidential election
received more engagement on Facebook than top stories from major media outlets. It
also has the potential to undermine trust in serious media coverage. The term has at
times been used to cast doubt upon legitimate news, and U.S. president Donald Trump
has been credited with popularizing the term by using it to describe any negative press
coverage of himself. It has been increasingly criticized, due in part to Trump's misuse,
with the British government deciding to avoid the term, as it is "poorly-defined" and
"conflates a variety of false information, from genuine error through to foreign
interference".( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news).
 Now you have a littebit understanding about the article that I have already read,
let me share my own opinion about this. We all know or should I say we already
experience a lockdown before right? We also experience panicking and a lot of fake
news, but for me, I am not still believing that there is a nation wide lockdown during the
holliday seasons, how should I say so? Because according to the article that I had
read,there is no a nation wide lockdown because that was just a big fake news and that
saying is according to presidential spokesman Harry Roque and DILG Secretary
Eduardo Año. Much better if we are focusing on our personal life, much better if we try
to know first or research the news that we heard before spreading it, let us try to think
first of what will be happen if we spread a news which is not true or a fake one.

But what will be my reaction if the nationwide lockdown will be implemented? Am

I agree with this or not?

For me, I will agree with this, we all know that the number of the positive person
in COVID-19 are now increasing, there is a lot of person who are now affected to the
said virus, yes we all know that most of the youth want to hang-out with their friend
during the holliday seasons, but we also know that most of them are one of the person
who are prone to the said virus. I believe that this nationwide lockdown will help our
country to decrease the number of infected in Corona Virus Disease. So in my opinion,
this is the time to show our love and have a wonderful time to our family, this is the time
to show and share to them our personal problems and make an unforgettable bonding
or moment with them.

For all of these, what I am trying to say is to be ready for what will happen next,
let us try to find the real news and don’t focus to those news which is not true or a fake
one, while the issue about the nationwide lockdown, let us focusing on our families,
don’t go, and also don’t forget to follow our simple safety health protocols to protect
ourselves to fight the said virus which is Corana Virus 2019 also known as a COVID-19.