Social laxity is biggest danger
Thursday 02nd April, 2020
Sri Lanka did not wait for COVID-19 to kill its citizens in order to act to vigorously fight the incoming epidemic. After an initial circulation of public ‘advisories’ for ‘guidelines’ to be voluntarily followed by citizens, the Government acted on multiple fronts with firm authority.
Sri Lanka quickly and sensibly followed China’s example of swift and strong action by the State. Executive actions were initiated and various state agencies deployed to enforce social distancing at least by suspending all public gatherings, closing down public places and shutting down work places that did not deal with either essential services or essential production.
It is now over a fortnight since the curfews began to be imposed. Much before that, the entirety of the public entertainment and leisure industry shut down while the Government called on all shops and malls to close. All schools had also closed, even though a few elite schools thought fit to ignore the obvious dangers and persisted with their ‘big matches’.
The WHO has already recognised and appreciated the very firm Presidential action to enforce restrictions on social behaviour and administratively and medically respond to the different aspects of the health crisis.
Nevertheless, barely a week after the spread of the virus slowed down, the number of infection cases soared and we are now at nearly 150 with the experts warning of more to come. Far more, according to the GMOA, which yesterday predicted the number could reach 3,000.
What has led to this apparent reversal of our fortunes ?
In the first place, those of our citizens who thought that things could get better so soon, had obviously not paid heed to the constant pronouncements by both the authorities as well as the medical scientists that this kind of disease does not fade away quickly. Thus, people did not realise that the pandemic had only just begun. So, in effect, there was no ‘reversal’, but only an interval as the epidemic moved on to a new stage of expansion.
Secondly, and most importantly, despite all the hard work and bravery, despite the elaborate systems so laboriously built up, there is a chink in our ‘armour’ against this invisible enemy.
The GMOA has been raising the alarm in this regard, constantly protesting the laxity of the public’s practise of prescribed social hygiene measures. The health experts as well as the Security Forces’ leadership echo their complaint.
The recent spike in the infection rate as well as the nature of current spread indicates that ‘chink’ in our armour against COVID-19: our very own behaviour.
All the systems and procedures in the world will not do if we, individual humans, do not practice precautionary social discipline. Ultimately, the virus spreads between humans and if we do not maintain the required social distance between ourselves, we will continue to spread it.
That ‘big match’ gave us the warning quite early but it, clearly, has not sunk in. In that big match, there was an infected person and some 250 persons had to undergo quarantine.
Despite that early example of the insidious nature of the contagion, people have continued to behave in that same carefree manner without attempting to understand the actual characteristics of this danger. There was a church gathering in Jaffna which resulted in more infections and the corollary hard work by health and security authorities to track down the scores of people exposed to the virus.
Aside from such incidents of mass human foolishness and selfishness, we see what happens when curfews are lifted. There is a mad rush and stores are crowded. Many people do not wear masks. And we do not know how many diligently wash hands and change clothes on return home after such possible exposure to the virus.
Even during curfew times, neighbourhoods resound to casual human conviviality with people carelessly mingling, chatting and taking walks together down secluded lanes as if such casual, ‘normal’ human interaction is the civilised thing to do.
It is absolutely not. In the face of this kind of threat to world humanity – described as potentially devastating as World War II – the ‘civilised’ thing is to drop all ‘normal’ sociability and diligently practice prescribed precautionary hygienic behaviour.
If we fail to report disease symptoms, we endanger the whole society. If we dodge the authorities in order to ‘escape’ quarantine, again we endanger humanity.
Do we have to wait for something like Black Death – the bubonic plague that depopulated medieval Europe – to happen before we start disciplining ourselves? Some security authorities are wondering whether to label as ‘manslaughter’ such irresponsible behaviour by our citizens that endangers the very lives of their fellow citizens and, on a mass scale at that.
It is time that all political leaderships and religious leaderships combine in making a single call to their followers: please strictly follow the basic hygiene rules that simply must complement all the medical and administrative measures being tirelessly taken to fight the pandemic.
