The key for 2022 is data analytics. A candidate with data rules, but a candidate who knows how to use data, wins.

Terrorism knows no boundaries, economic classes and races. It is morphed in several dimensions, that is why it is hard to legislate the means to control and prevent the same. The world today is so different that the argument about terrorists versus freedom fighters is no longer relevant. Countries are passing anti-terrorism measures to respond to critical cells operating in their territories. 

Covid-19 has shone what big data and a high level of technology can do. Countries deployed these things. China tapped into big data, machine learning and other digital tools as the virus spread through the nation in order to track and contain the outbreak.

How does a learner learn? That should be the rethinking that every academician must confront because practitioners can tell if one is a catalyst of process-based mentorship, the door to future learning.

Still, PRRD rules going to the sunset of his term. PRRD will be the first and only president in the country who will not be a lame duck because of Covid-19.

And this is what politicians should remember. They are being judged right now by their constituents and they will bring that to the polls an emotional tug on the heart that cannot be changed by a narrative made solely for a 90- or 45-day campaign period. Covid-19 is the campaign. If local government units (LGUs) and national officials do not get it, they may get the ire of the community come May 2022.

Covid-19 is unprecedented. No one was prepared. Leaders melt or shine depending on how they took hold of the problem and communicated to assure the public that there is government and government will get things done. We can’t rely on solutions from the old school, but the new school is not even constructed yet. Strategic leaders embrace challenges, looking at these as opportunities.

With an enemy unknown, the Department of Health (DoH) was blindsided, just like all national health agencies in other countries. The protocols were there, but it needed a redefinition in terms of capacities from supplies to laboratories, to data and data analytics, to operational definition and hopefully localization because, technically, there is a health care provider network already in the country.

We need one but to say there is no plan in managing the pandemic is erroneous. One has to understand PRRD and how he decides, the value of gut politics or author Malcolm Gladwell’s idea of “blink” in relation to decision makers.

In this Covid-19 situation, a pandemic, the frontline should have been the barangay and not the health workers because identifying, contact-tracing, monitoring and investigating are all tasks of barangay and that is not just the barangay captain, but the kagawad (village councilors), health workers and the tanod (village police officers).

Let’s not lose our humanity in the process. These frontliners walked with grit and determination in their young years to achieve their dreams. The nation is indebted to all frontliners. We shall overcome.

It has been said that “social norms are powerful motivators and getting in the way of people taking the right steps in response to the pandemic. To create a new social norm, human beings like to see behavior modeled. This serves as a signal that says, ‘Oh, someone else is doing it so I should do it also.’” Imagine if all of us in NCR practice social distancing.