LETTER | A perfect disaster formula

LETTER | Infection figures seem to be enjoying a bull run lately. Political uncertainty adds to this chaos and hundreds are dying every day. 

Covid patients are spilling over every hospital in the country, frontline workers are over-stretched to the point of collapse and the common rakyat does not see any silver lining ahead. 

In fact, every one of us lives in utter fear – a fear that never existed before. This fear is very real and justified as the latest variant strikes hard and fast. And what compounds all these is nothing concrete seems to be forthcoming from the government on plans and strategies to contain this spiralling infection rate. 

To summarise, it is apparent that the pandemic and the political uncertainty form a perfect disaster formula and the latest news on the political front is indeed worrying. We foresee another month of an increasing rate of infection, another month of people dying, another month of people without food and another month of misery.

Of the two main issues, the political problem is within our control and the sooner this issue is settled, the better it is. Whoever governs the country would then be able to focus wholeheartedly on combatting the pandemic. 

It is already a well-known fact that the new variant is a more deadly strain and nothing less than a full focus is effective enough to reduce its destructive path. Hence, the sooner the political issue is settled, the better it is for the nation. 

Why is there a need for another month for this to be settled? The king may have very good reasons to accede to this one-month delay but given the severity of the pandemic and its resulting catastrophic consequences, any delay would mean untold suffering and misery.

Moving on, once the political issue is settled – hopefully as soon as possible, whoever forms the government should sit down and start planning to tackle the pandemic effectively. Looking at what had happened in the past two months, the strategies taken to contain the virulent spread had been dismal and disappointingly ineffective. 

Please admit it as the numbers do not lie. Time and again, the words “we believe in science and data” are mainly rhetorics”. You may have all the science and data but you simply failed to use these to address the problem towards the desired results. In short, you do not have all the answers. 

Stop this denial syndrome and take a good look at what others have done to curb the spread effectively. It is not a shameful thing to emulate good practices by others, regardless of the origin of these practices. The main concern is to save lives and livelihood.

China is currently also experiencing a surge in infection, and we should learn from them. They have successfully contained the Wuhan pandemic within a reasonably short span of time and they are now much wiser in tackling the new surge. They lockdown any specific area and carry out mass testing of the whole area, all in a matter of a few days. 

And mind you, any specific area in China means at least a few million residents. While doing this the rest of the city continues to enjoy their economic activities as usual, albeit with extra cautionary measures. This is targeted lockdown – effective and economically viable. 

To do this, a lot of micro-planning and specifics need to be incorporated into the strategy. This is how you could use all your “science and data”. Lockdown of the whole nation or state is not effective enough if the cluster areas or spots are allowed free movement, though in a restrictive manner. 

Any specific area under lockdown needs effective remedial action such as mass testing of the area and subsequent isolation or quarantine in order to be effective

What we witness here is a plan is hatched and implemented. What happens subsequent to this is left unsupervised and not monitored, until something major crops up. Then damage control comes in. By then, many lives would have been lost, many businesses would have closed and the list goes on. 

It is not good enough to repeatedly tell us that you care. The fact is – we don’t see and feel that. With such a bloated cabinet, and with so little done, how do you justify that you care? 

How many of the ministers are really on the ground to see for themselves what sort of misery the rakyat is going through? 

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.