Thrift store Japan Home Centre went viral for its post that computed how the P67 billion in mishandled COVID-19 funds could have been better spent—1,522,727,272 billion pieces of its tabo (dipper) at P44 each.
That's more than enough to give each one of China's 1.3 billion people with a tabo each, and 14 tabo for every Filipino in the most recent census, all 108 million of us including babies.
Health Sec. Francisco Duque has been called a sadboi online for accusing the Commission on Audit of ripping his reputation apart with its findings that there were "deficiencies" in how the P65 billion was spent. The public outrage is giving him sleepless nights, he said.
To be fair, the COA did not accuse the DOH of corruption. It's just that the procedure for spending billions of pesos in taxpayers' money was not fully followed, hence the deficiencies.
What also riled Filipinos was a P700,000 funding request for four "2-in-1, high-end" laptops that the DOH said would be used to build a vaccine registry. The P67 billion was also quadruple the P15 billion that PhilHealth was asked to liquidate in 2020.
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How to spend P67 billion?
If all of the Philippines' 500,000 nurses get a one-time bonus, P67 billion is enough to give them P134,000 each.
Vaccines for all. With P67 billion, the government can fully vaccinate the entire 109 million population using AstraZeneca at P690 for two doses or 28.1 million people using Pfizer jabs at P2,379 for two doses.
Mass testing, finally. At P2,500 per RT-PCR swab test, P67 billion can fund 26.8 million tests, more than enough to test Metro Manila's entire population of 12 million twice over.
Ayuda for everyone. Split for the entire population, every Filipino will get P615. That's enough for a kilo of pork, five kilos of rice and vegetables or a six-piece KFC Garlic Butter Chicken meal.
How big is P67 billion?
Sleepless nights. If a person were to count every single peso of the P67 billion at one peso per second or P86,400 per day, it would take that person 775,462 days or 2,124 years to finish.
If an employee in Metro Manila receives an average monthly salary of P18,900, he would have to toil for more than 295,000 years to earn P67 billion.
If real estate tycoon Manny Villar, the richest Filipino according to Forbes, lost P65 billion, he would kiss off one-fifth of his P349.45 billion net worth.
Buying Manny Pacquiao's Forbes Park mansion listed at P2 billion in Presello.com would leave a P65 billion change, enough for dozens more luxury abodes.
Film director Cathy Garcia-Molina would have to crank up 76 more movies as the highest-grossing movie of all time, Hello, Love, Goodbye starring Kathryn Bernardo and Alden Richards to make P67 billion.