Don’t lower your guard just yet

The party was in full swing the day the President relaxed the curfew: Clubs were full, the alcohol flowed and the bad food was consumed in copious quantities.

Covid-19 has had its good points, difficult as they are to see. First, the general state of hygiene has improved and I should expect that communicable diseases, which come from eating dirty things, have been suppressed. Secondly, without alcohol and with men required in the house — or face the boot of the GSU — by 7pm or 9pm, accidents had generally become fewer. The third effect is that, with people working from home and schools closed, traffic has been a lot lighter.

The coronavirus pandemic has been a nightmare from a health, human and economic point of view, though. It is a horrible disease which progresses in unearthly ways in the human body. It shuts down the breathing and locks the chest; it buggers the organs in the most bizarre of ways, may it be liver function or other important processes like blood pressure, blood sugar and so on.

If some mad genius sat in his lab and manufactured it, then he made the perfect pathogen to terrorise and kill human beings. Not that there is any scientific proof of such a thing. No. Nature is quite capable, all on its own, of serving up its fair share of nightmares.

Battered from two directions

Can you remember the last time you had some money? Can you remember a time when you didn’t have to wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night wondering about the welfare of your family? The economy is tattered, most of us have gone for almost a year without full pay. Many small businesses are extinct, a lot of young entrepreneurs have closed shop and moved in with their parents upcountry.

So we are being battered from two directions: Economic hardship on one hand and the risk of disease on the other. It’s a bad place to be in; we have to choose between our pockets and health, it seems.

The infection rates went down because the health message sank into our heads. We have been washing our hands, sanitising, not crowding and also using face covering. If we stop doing all these things, or even some of them, there is great danger of getting socked in the solar plexus by this awful virus.

I have seen many cities opening up then quickly closing up again after the virus exploded in the population. If you want to catch Covid-19, the bar is the place to go. After a couple of drinks, discipline begins to slip up, people get closer to each other, the place fills up and you can’t feed the alcohol into your face if it is covered. Also, since many drinking spaces are indoors and the ventilation not that great, the virus hangs there in the air, waiting to strike.

You only need a couple of people to infect a whole community; in most places, just one spreader started the flame of infection. Since there is a whole load of virus still among us, the worst is far from over. It may not be killing the healthy and strong but, as it spreads, it will find the infirm and weak and cause them serious hardship — perhaps even cost them their lives.

This is the point that needs to be made. Our discipline is deplorable. In Japan, homes have thermometers; you take your temperature before you leave the house. If it’s high or you have any other symptoms, you stay at home and monitor yourself.

And, if you feel really unwell, you call the doctor. Here, folks who were tested and found to have the virus packed their families into the car and fled the country, especially at the coast, infecting others, including their loved ones along the way.

New normal

My own personal opinion is that we can reopen, resume the bulk of the businesses, but we should not try to recreate March 12, the last day before Covid-19. The ‘new normal’ should include lots of distributed working, strict enforcement of health guidelines and a permanent determination not to lower our guard.

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Revisiting my column of last week, it occurs to me that I probably was not perfectly fair in dishing out praise and encomiums. I welcomed action taken against graft in the counties, where endemic corruption has become something of a joke.

I should have acknowledged that it takes a whole load of courage on the part of the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission and its boss Twalib Abdallah Mbarak to confront these entitled princelings who expect to steal and not be asked a question.

They seem to be saying: “It is my right to be corrupt; how dare you try to hold me to account? I am the boss; you, the slaving taxpayer, are my servant.

“Your job is to work day and night, make sacrifices, deny yourself, but pay taxes. Mine is to take the money and spend it as I wish.

“If you dare question me, there will be severe consequences.”

You will be surprised how many people think this way. Those who are confronting them are owed a debt of gratitude.

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