APRIL 9 — Break glass in case of emergency, the notice read!
Seriously folks — as if it’s not serious enough without the reminder — don’t panic in these testing days.
If the information you possess is not comprehensive or reassuring, it’s not you as much as the situation’s complexity. You are as much a victim as you are a person expected to contribute to its solution.
But you can act, nevertheless.
To start with, accept that there’s nothing straightforward about Covid-19. It constantly requires contextual understanding and application, and the disagreements are far more than the agreements.
An uninvited virus irks a globe and fouls up lives. Yet the only means to progress collectively is by reasonable response rather than over-reaction.
In the early stages of the movement control order (MCO) several were found to have lied about their whereabouts in order to get free tests at government facilities. They were doing themselves a disservice by being on hospital grounds.
Today, there are still limited test kits and they’re distributed efficaciously. The majority infected are asymptomatic — appear not ill but they can infect others. Testing them is put off as they are assumed not to need medical help, but the fear of transmission remains.
Which is why the MCO’s blanket enforced distancing seeks to reduce the transmission rate.
Malaysians arriving from abroad have unknown written on their foreheads for where they were on their travels is suspect, and for that reason they are either quarantined, lately at hotels, or if with symptoms sent to hospitals.
The whole matter of who gets what and needs to do what with themselves is about expecting sensible behaviour.
Case in point, examination wing which needed disinfection and the medical staff quarantine because the outpatient informs belatedly she lives with a potential transmitter.
Speaking about context, there’s the whole thing about exercise.
Don’t jog in the open, cause if you do it, the rest will follow, the common warning. Soon, it’ll be akin to the now-cancelled Standard Chartered Marathon.
A crowd of runners pose a risk, thus the blanket ban. After all, if they can run, then surely the elderly can take their evening strolls. And then next, the groups that need to go on historical guided walks along the Klang River.
Good solution, the jogging ban seemingly, but is it?
A nation with record numbers of hypertension, diabetes and obesity asked to sit on its ass for a month.
There are ways to exercise when in seclusion. But, if people struggle to enter a gym next door to their office, their discipline to commit to dour solo exercise regimens may be suspect.
The community running track and the presence of other runners on it, may be the reason they do the furtive three kilometres of pseudo-running weekly. Now that’s out. Mindful too, for many office workers the commute and the meetings are the main sources of exercise.
Compound that with the knowledge underlying medical conditions along with age cause Covid-19 mortality, then we are hurting people in the medium term — as the virus expects no vaccine to fend it off in the next 15 months. And the people, not afforded the exercise presently to build the immunity.
But the MCO is about nett effect, and for that blanket rules must apply. Even if tugged from many corners as people have many excuses. Not all invalid.
Why this discussion then?
Because the MCO eventually ends or terminates in stages. Raya can’t be empty houses, parks will need runners, rush hour trains will be full, airplanes have to lift-off and the economy is about unfettered movement of capital, ideas and people.
The MCO now, or even with an extension of any kind from April 14, gradually converts to self-regulation, by individuals, their employers and local authorities — when the police return to their stations and the soldiers to their barracks.
A mental approach to things is necessary. The MCO is the training-wheels period for the people. An appreciation of the situation and its intricacies can assist decision-making.
By observing what’s happening now and to choose how to act when the threat of imprisonment is not hovering over us for not complying.
Some industries can work remotely for a longer period, and work with skeletal staff. Policies can be instituted to limit client-facing sessions.
Schools must open. While society lauds universities which prepare for further online delivery of coursework, both administrators and students know that online based education is limited, and surely does not offer the university experience. Campus life is central to the learning processes of those institutions.
Primary education is worst affected. It involves the highest number of students and face to face interaction is central. Eight-year-olds won’t practise social distancing. And playing is synonymous with learning. How to circumvent that?
The poor are most vulnerable as every day without school sets a divide between them and the affluent who find technological solutions and couple it with tutoring in their homes with study rooms.
So much of what is normal must return for society’s own sanity and for it to operate, which is code for a working economy.
We’ll have to get back to normal, as best we can, and that will be driven by the people, not by government as much. Which threads back to the prime minister’s break from Malay and into English at the end of his economic stimulus package March 28 speech, which was a plea to the middle-class.
The remainder of the MCO is time for us to plan the months to come, to determine what we will do — whether it’s no non-essential foreign travel, no return to the village for the holidays or limited-invite weddings.
Good luck planning!
*This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
