Covid-19: Moving beyond panic and irrationality

In the past eight weeks, Covid-19 hit me at home in a way that trained my focus on the matter more sharply. My 87-year old mother contracted the disease.

The family matriarch, who is on a wheelchair, rarely moves out of the homestead, where the Covid-19 protocols are observed to the letter. But the pandemic found her nonetheless.

The near-nonagenarianloves to share meals with her many friendly neighbours. So when we announced the bad news, fear and panic gripped her neighbours. Nobody visited her forthwith. The upside is that we saved a lot of money on food.

But that was wiped out several times over by the hospital bills. Our mother benefited from some very kind and capable doctors. Four weeks ago, she tested negative. We, her progeny, heaved a huge sigh of relief.

The fear, panic and irrational behaviour exhibited by my mother’s village-mates is a microcosm of what is happening globally amid the Covid-19 crisis.

In the face of fatal pandemics, human reaction has followed a peculiar pattern defined by a toxic mix of panic, fear, denial, ethnic or racial profiling and scapegoating. The challenge is compounded by lack of unanimity among the scientific community, sometimes replete with conflicting information even from the World Health Organization (WHO) itself.

When politics and spicy conspiracy theories are added to the mix, we get classic deadly pandemic! People are going to die — unfortunately — just as with the H1N1 in 1918. The influenza virus pandemic that coincided with World War I a century ago devastated the West, claiming 50 million lives. More soldiers died from the virus than in combat.

Mass awareness

For fear of mass awareness of the flu stifling the war effort, European governments censored the media and hid information from the public. As a result, people died in the millions. When Spain went public with the flu, other European countries and the media branded the disease the “Spanish Flu’’.

The name has persisted, yet other European countries suffered more fatalities of the flu! Subsequent studies traced the virus to Kansas, the United States. A conspiracy theory emerged that a German pharmaceutical firm had laced aspirin with the virus as a weapon of war to exterminate other European nations, their enemies in the war. Sound familiar?

Witnessed denial

We have witnessed such denial by governments in our region in the not-too-distant past. Three decades ago, when HIV/Aids emerged, the world panicked. If I recall correctly, the first case of Aids diagnosed in Kenya, at Kenyatta National Hospital, was attributed to a Rwandan man. Kenyans were made to believe that the disease originated in Uganda as the government tried to cushion the tourist sector.

When the flood of Aids-related deaths soared and could no longer be concealed, the measures taken were markedly gross. For example, when someone died from Aids, the body was covered with a polythene sheet while health professionals wore spacecraft-like suits that covered their entire bodies. Clearly, the recent midnight burial of a Covid-19 victim in Siaya is nothing new. Never mind that the scientists say the virus dies when its human host does.

There is some scientific logic that informs implementation of extreme precautions prescribed by the Ministry of Health, on WHO’s advice, at the beginning of the cycle of deadly viruses. Those may then be relaxed once more is known about the virus but, from the outset, exacting, even draconian, measures are prescribed. Just like in the case of HIV/Aids, at some point, the health community advocated home-based care rather than isolation and quarantine. We are moving that direction with Covid-19.

When HIV first emerged, it was said to be prevalent among homosexuals in San Francisco, US. The theory was that it originated from Africa, the initial vectors being chimpanzees in DR Congo. With time, HIV/Aids engulfed the world, and the theory faded.

Among Africans, a persistent theory maintains that HIV was manufactured in an American laboratory with the intention of eliminating people of colour, particularly Blacks. That doesn’t make sense, considering that Washington has been the biggest donor of HIV/Aids intervention projects in Africa.

We witnessed the drama of then-US President Donald Trump and his Republican followers referring to Covid-19 as the “China Virus”. Just as with the “ Spanish Flu”, here is a classic case of sheer denial, caustic racism and reckless politicking. Ironically, Covid-19 scapegoating is happening against a backdrop of upwards of 650,000 deaths in the US. That is against 4,000 or so Chinese who have died from it.

Mass awareness

Beijing has implemented robust measures to keep the pandemic at bay. In an instructive and phenomenal way, China has, so to speak, cut off any oxygen that could fan a fire of the pandemic. By doing so, it has, by and large, contained the spread of Covid-19.

The contrast is happening in Europe and the US. Anti-vaxxers are not only refusing to take vaccines; they are also demonstrating in the streets in their thousands without masks, supported by some politicians. Yet over 1,500 people die daily from Covid-19 complications — over 90 per cent of them those that have refused to be vaccinated.

Toxic politics is the origin of the obsession, disinformation and scaremongering that attends to Covid-19. The issue of the origin of Covid-19, as advanced by some private citizens of US or government operatives, is simply racism wearing lipstick. This should be exposed for what it is — a mix of xenophobia, stupidity and racism. The supposed origin of Covid-19 is not a product of a scientific quest or inquiry as things stand. Rather, the whole saga is a geopolitical attack, this time targeting the Chinese.

The world must now move beyond panic, lunacy and drivel. We are, clearly, not short of lessons from the past.

Mr Tuju is a Cabinet Secretary and Secretary-General of the Jubilee Party.