It’s easy to forget that the pandemic burst upon the world just four years ago. And it’s been barely a year since we got our sense of normalcy back. But even with little reflection, we know how much we’ve changed. Many of us lost loved ones. And we all live with the changes in the mundane, hybrid ways of our lives — the online meetings, the reliance on deliveries, the new appreciation for nature, the greater realization of how fragile and fleeting life is. Personally, as among the first Covid survivors in the Philippines, I feel lucky to be alive.
With the hurly-burly of everyday life, we don’t often have a chance to look back. I just had a big-time chance in Cebu.
I was there recently to speak to an audience of public health doctors. As I usually do when I encounter doctors in any setting, I thanked them for their service, while thinking of the frontliners who saved me.
It had dawned on me that most in the audience would not be clinicians, or the doctors in hospitals and clinics who take care of individual patients. Rather, they were experts on public health, physicians concerned with the health of entire communities, managing immunization, sanitation and other programs to prevent disease outbreaks. Some were educators who wanted doctors of the future to think about serving communities where most people can’t afford the typical fees of doctors.
While clinicians monitored a patient’s blood pressure and other personal health indicators, public health doctors also looked for disease patterns and spikes in entire population groups.
Former Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit, an epidemiologist, spoke about the need to reform medical school curricula to cover the bigger picture and expose students to rural situations. He spoke about a “theory of change” where immersion and social awareness lead to passion and enlightened leadership.
There is actually already a tradition, started during Health Secretary Juan Flavier’s time in the mid-1990s, of recent medical school graduates serving in underserved communities under a government program called “Doctors to the Barrios.”
About two handfuls of doctors to the barrios, both current and former, attended the Cebu conference and shared their transformative experiences, including conference co-organizer Dr. Mike Caampued who told me about his repeated visits over the years to the far-flung Polillo Islands, even long after his service as a doctor to the barrio.
I reminded them that if any group could assess the nation’s performance in responding to the pandemic, it was their organization, the Philippine Society of Public Health Physicians. The government may have little incentive to do an objective review because of the tendency to defend its own performance and questionable policies. If even basketball teams do the obligatory “post mortem” after each game, so much more must the health sector after the existential crisis we just went through.
For the sake of those who must manage the next pandemic, we need to know, for example, if our leaders did the right thing in shutting down schools for so long and requiring face shields even outdoors. Incredibly, there has been no formal review yet that future leaders could reference, and none seems to be forthcoming.
- Less visible than clinicians, public health doctors perform an essential role, especially during emergencies such as the pandemic.
- There has been no thorough review of the national response to the pandemic, a gross oversight.
- The virus of medical disinformation continues to spread online.
- Doctors must become information warriors and not just medical ninjas.
- Tiktok is a major new battlefield where young doctor-influencers are valiantly battling to counter the flood of falsehoods.
THE VIRUS OF FALSEHOODS
I joked that I was one of the few in the room who couldn’t physically cure anyone, but I did want to talk about the virus of medical falsehoods, a major strain of disinformation that made immunization coverage plummet, resulting in spikes in measles and polio, the latter of which was believed to have already been eradicated in the country.
I told them that they must now be information warriors and not just medical ninjas. The new battleground is TikTok where facts and accurate medical information are being drowned out by falsehoods and nonsense.
Much as some titos and titas would prefer, we can’t ignore TikTok and other popular social media platforms as these are where many people, especially the youth, practically live and get much of their information. We can’t concede this vast space to pranksters, haters, liars and fools.
One cardinal principle of mass communications is your messages need to be where the audiences are. TikTok is a problematic platform for sure, with its ties to China, risk of scrolling addiction, and, like many social media apps before it, unable to distinguish between fact and fiction. But it’s also the fastest growing social platform in the internet’s short history. That’s why the sensible, scientific, and well-intentioned voices in the universe must also be there. That’s where our children and grandchildren are, if not now probably soon.
In a world of lies, the universe of truth must mobilize: journalists, doctors, scholars, educators and other respected providers of science and facts.
Make it a mantra: In a world of lies, the universe of truth must mobilize.
I flashed on the screen several youthful Filipino doctors who have millions of followers on TikTok where they attack misconceptions (kissing babies is harmless) and talk about sensitive topics that most people would avoid even in private conversations (vaginal farts, signs of UTI, sex during pregnancy, causes of bad breath, and the health risks of using your phone while sitting on the toilet).
Influencers aren’t just celebs hawking their brands or trying to build followings by entertaining us. They’re also these millennial doctors educating the public in engaging ways. Let’s face it — many more will seek medical information from these online content creators than see a live doctor. Their followers can ponder en masse common concerns posted by anyone, like this query: “Doc, bakit ang dali kong masuka pag umiinom ako ng alak kahit hindi pa ako lasing?” (Doc, how come I vomit easily after drinking alcohol even when I’m not drunk yet?)
Then I asked the conference audience a pointed question, why aren’t these doctor-influencers here?
I was honored to be invited to Cebu as an analog native/digital migrant from the so-called legacy media. But the most popular voices on health are mostly these young lone rangers. They need not only acknowledgment from esteemed peers. They need oversight, even the occasional argument, from the profession. Few would doubt their impact and relevance. But are they giving the best advice? Are they covering the most critical health concerns? Are they all resisting the temptation to promote certain drugs and medical products? What is the place of sponsorships, if any? Should the profession develop guidelines for medical and health influencers?
The pandemic has made us all more comfortable with screens, now the go-to source of health information. Professional organizations need to take this realm and its luminaries more seriously.
I ended my address to the public health mavens by projecting an image of “Doc Alvin” on TikTok (2.7M followers). The nerdy millennial was on a zoom call with cancer patient Dr. Willie Ong in his hospital room. Dr. Ong allowed Doc Alvin to describe his condition to viewers and even explain the results of his CAT scan in a way understandable to ordinary viewers. What journalist could do better than that?
---
(Veteran Kapuso journalist H. Severino will be writing occasional reflections for this website under a column entitled, “Essay.” In 2023, he was given the Gawad Balagtas, a lifetime literary achievement award given to Filipino writers by the Unyon ng mga Manunulat sa Pilipinas (UMPIL), the country's largest organization of Filipino writers. )
