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SARAWAK starts its second full-force Movement Control Order (MCO) with effect from today till June 11, 2021. This has been long expected since the Covid-19 infections and cases have continued to rise despite earlier announced controls, which were sporadic and in my opinion, not efficiently enforced.
It’s time that we, as a community and a society, learn to recognise once and for all the only consequences of not abiding or strictly adhering to the MCO this time round – it’s really all a matter of life or death. The latter would be an extremely stressful, painful, long-suffering and a very lonely one; your loved ones would not be there by your side as you lie completely isolated inside your ICU ward, just waiting to die.
Your funeral would be a quick affair, your earthly body would be bundled up, incinerated and no one would be there to bid you a fond farewell or give you one last look. All that’d be left of your life might be reduced to just a short message on social media – a Tweet or a Facebook mention, maybe an obituary in the local newspapers and some group-chain messages on WhatsApp groups that you were on, forwarded by your friends and family members.
There’d be messages of condolences and some weeping and adoring tributes. No doubt by the time someone else in your circle or family also passes on, you’d be quietly forgotten.
I know that’s not the way that any of us would wish to go. But these are troubling, unsettling and very strange times – nothing has been the same since that March 18, 2020 day when we had our first lockdown that had lasted till March 31. I remember that date well as I had planned for over a year to celebrate my 70th birthday on that day. There’s now been two cancellations over two years – who knows when if any of us can ever celebrate any more happy occasions in the years to come?
I’ve been trying to look for answers as to why and how the coronavirus has managed to spread so quickly and has so far infected so many diverse communities throughout Sarawak in such a short period of time. It has especially been bad since around the beginning of the month of May 2021.
Personally, I blame it on three major factors: firstly, the lack of political will on the part of the government of the day; secondly the mentality, attitude and aptitude of our populace at large; and lastly, the perception of the public of the many injustices, imbalances and poor enforcement of the ever-changing Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), which has caused chaos and confusion to all. One or more of these factors have led to a ‘so-what?’ attitude by the man on the street towards the authorities concerned and dampened his spirit to comply.
We have a very capable team of medical professionals who are co-leading the team at the Ministry of Health, the State Disaster Management Committee (SDMC) and the Sarawak State Cabinet; they are supposedly reinforced by the presence of a few top political leaders. They meet regularly and present us with daily reports and revised SOP on an almost daily basis and they take action by announcing new guidelines and new controls.
Somehow somewhere, it then all gets tangled up in either vapid bureaucracy and poor enforcement, or
God knows what.
Why does it take a day, sometimes two, to come up with the actual details of a new SOP when you can actually announce it right away?
Why the wait? In a pandemic like what we’re going through right now, 24 hours can be a lifetime for some.
Does not the scientifically-based medical team make the rules and authorise the SOP and ensure its enforcement? Do we need politicians to agree with it? Do we have to be politically-correct lest the party in power loses support at the next elections? Aren’t human lives, these voters’ lives, worth more than mere politics?
One could sense that with, say a big festive occasion on the horizon like Chinese New Year, Hari Raya, Gawai or Christmas, the tendency would be to ensure that any new SOP or rules would treat the celebrants with special loving care in case the group celebrating gets annoyed, angry or even threaten to withdraw their future support.
Then if you give one group’s special treatment of, say a day or two, to celebrate, you must also give the other group equal time and similar treatment – the fact that they may get more infections in a shorter period of time and then die in bigger numbers are the least of your worries?
We, the people, are as much to be blamed as well. I was utterly shocked to see the long lines of customers queuing up recently in Sibu (I see mostly youngsters and fans of a certain K-pop group) just to buy takeaways from a popular fast-food chain because of some promotion. Similarly at the many banks and financial institutions for the public to withdraw their latest government sponsored funds, etc.
There must also be a better way than for people to queue at police stations everywhere just to obtain a permit to travel across districts?
Why didn’t the authorities carefully think through all these before they enforce or make it effective? Are they all really this dumb?
We should think twice before venturing outdoors in order to either perform a chore or attend to an essential work. In my frank and humble opinion, we should all ask ourselves if we fulfil any of these five reasons before we leave our homes:
- to obtain food and essential supplies;
- to perform essential work;
- to provide care and in caregiving;
- to exercise for up to two hours with one other person, and;
- to get vaccinated or for personal medical care.
Finally, I have noticed and I have heard so many complaints and justifiable comments about the unfairness of it all. Yes, the government has asked for everyone in the eligible age groups to register for vaccinations; many have done so, but they have neither been notified either way of any appointment nor received any response, from the heavily-criticized MySejahtera app.
The process of vaccinating the population has been extremely slow and tedious, and most applicants have no idea of what has happened to their applications.
Most of them don’t care what brands they are getting – they just want to get on with it!
Grievances also arise due to the imbalances of the fines and compounds being meted out, unfairly it seems, to many traders, hawkers; and even common folk who were caught unawares about either exercising outdoors, eating within the comfort of their vehicles, or some other offence. It seems interpretation of the rules is left to the enforcer, which should never be the case.
It would be many more months, maybe even years before we could reach a minimum of 70 per cent herd immunity via the vaccination process; and even longer before we could all return to our normal lives prior to March 2020.
At the end of it all, as at Thursday – May 27, 2021, the rate of infection for Sarawak was 1,450 in 100,000; which if you took it down to a figure we could all comprehend, meant that 1.4 person in 100 had been infected so far.
Total deaths so far has been 272, which seems a lowly 0.61 per cent, but again, if we look at the total cumulative positive cases so far of 44,738, it is slightly more than 63 per cent of the total population of Kuching (*710,000 – estimate for 2021).
Now that is scary!
Keep well, stay safe, stay home and please obey all the MCO SOP strictly!
Amen.