Controlling the Covid-19 Narrative

It is not a Friday, but we shall do this, anyway.

Picture the year 1985.

The United States of America is on the thick of what is called the war on drugs. The government is using every relevant law-enforcement agency to prevent the influx, distribution and use of drugs into and within US borders. At the start of the battle, it is the police, the military, immigration, coast guard and FBI in the thick of this fight. Later, the leadership decides that it is important that they have an agency dedicated to the war on drugs and in 1973 the Drug Enforcement Administration is established. It is an underfunded organization whose headquarters is in some commercial building on top of a restaurant or something of the sort. At the end of the day, there is some sort of organization that is the face of the US war on drugs and the boys get cracking. They establish offices within the US and in Mexico. By this time, the biggest worry when it comes to drugs is not the white powder (cocaine) or heroin but rather weed (marijuana) which comes from Mexico by the tons.

Across the southern border in Mexico, Miguel-Angel Felix Gallardo has united all the drug trafficking organizations and formed an empire that is backed by higher levels of politicians and law enforcement personnel. And then the DEA steps in. They collaborate with local law enforcement in making busts of trucks carrying drugs across the border, but these are relatively small and sometimes they are gifted to them by the drug cartels as decoys. The agents ask for more personnel, security and equipment to no avail. They are told to be satisfied with their accomplishments and the much-needed support until one of them, Kiki Camarena gets tortured to death in 1985. His main sin was to discover a 200-acre field of marijuana on which hundreds of growers worked. His efforts then lead to the burning of the whole field costing the traffickers hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. He is then abducted, tortured and killed by the cartel. Upon the discovery of his death, the DEA and CIA go into overkill and send all sorts of men and surveillance equipment for the protection of agents in Mexico. Years down the line, DEA agents in Colombia and Mexico go on to say they feel untouchable and protected from Cartels because Kiki was their “Jesus” who died for their security. It took a death for them to act. You know where I am going with this, right?

Lets fast forward to 2019 and 2020.

We start hearing about the coronavirus that is causing all sorts of trouble and killing people in China. We sit back because China is halfway across the globe even though our little cousin is in China doing his postgraduate education in some undocumented part of China north of Beijing. The pandemic rages on and wreaks havoc in Iran and Italy. Still. No cause for alarm despite the people who visit such countries. At this point, we are several months into the new year and the virus is spreading across the globe and hitting our neighboring countries. We go on with elections (and I will not talk about the stupidity we spat in campaign rallies) saying that we need to sort out regime change before a new government leads us into the fight against the virus. By the time the new government gets in, the precedent has been set. People are so used to crowded rallies at Masintha ground and they no longer feel the need to protect themselves. No one is dying, after all, we console ourselves. Some die but we continue with our laid-back attitude towards the pandemic.

As 2020 comes to an end we hear of new developments. Now these are both positive and negative. On one hand, there is a vaccine that has been developed. On the other, there is a new strain of the virus which has more teeth than the old one. We sit back again and continue to gather at Zodetsa to eat meat with zero regard to social distancing or any other preventive measures.

It is now 2021. The numbers of cases are rising. Every single day you hear people talking about losing a loved one or someone they know to Covid-19. The statistics that people were casually posting have now turned into names of actual people with friends and family. Though not newsworthy we keep seeing articles of so-called high-profile people in our local councils, churches and villages dying of the disease. Everybody begins to see the realities of the pandemic, but the reaction remains diverse.

How am I doing so far? Did I miss anything?

Present day: Tuesday, January 12^th 2K21.

A normal morning turns into a sad one for the nation when we learn that we have lost two cabinet ministers to Covid-19. The stay safe message gets amplified all over the social media and some express their shock at the death of the cabinet ministers. Other lash out and point out that these are not the first people to lose their lives to the novel coronavirus. A Presidential address is called and we are ordered to fly the national flag at half mast (somehow this reminds me of one Jimmy Hoffa; read about him) in the two-day mourning period for (and I quote) the “ministers and other people who we have lost to the virus”. A state of national disaster is declared. The president goes on to indicate his intention to meet the presidential task force on Covid-19 and to direct relevant ministries to review their Covid-19 prevention guidelines. He then rightly reminds all of us to not relax with the preventive measures and encourages us that no matter what happens, we will prevail.

After the reaction of the masses to the recent deaths and the government’s reaction to the deaths of the ministers, there are many who are wondering whether the government was waiting for the big people to die to come up with decisive action. I have been wondering whether we all needed to see someone we know die before we could realize that wearing a mask and physical distancing is important. With the 1985 story I shared, I cannot help but wonder whether we needed a Kiki Camarena to die for us to realize how serious a pandemic this is.

I will start with the government because if I am to weigh the entity with which I have more issues between the public and the government machinery, then I would side with the government on this one. As we know, the world is a global village. When we heard of a raging virus, many knew that it was just a matter of when and not a matter of whether it was going to come. Our preparedness was very scanty if any and the decisions that have been made over time have been erratic. Lockdown today, campaign rally tomorrow. One might blame the transition but to be honest there has not been much of a difference in the handling of the pandemic if you compare the governments. It is a little disappointing to learn that the president is going to meet the presidential (whaaaat!) task force to map out the way forward after what I may call a “trigger”. Forgive my emotions but I was of the idea that these things were supposed to be regular and whenever necessary we were supposed to have adjustments to the measured in response to the situation. Again, you will forgive. I am a utopian thinker who is at the time overcome with emotion.

And now I should deal with you, dear reader. We may blame the government machinery all we want but, in all honesty, the public is the driver of the pandemic. When we got so absorbed with regime change and decided to be congregating at Masintha for DPP and Tonse rallies, we clapped for our leaders when they said we do not have the virus in our midst. When we heard of deaths, we said the government was faking the deaths for its own benefit. Now we have turned on the politicians who we sided with then and we are calling them bad. The hypocrisy in this is top notch and hard to entertain. But ok.

We have seen that the second wave of the virus continues to rage on, but we have continued to live our lives normally. Church here. Walking unprotected in the market. Borrowing a mask to get into a bank. All sorts of things are happening. Some have risen to the top of covidiocy and decided not to acknowledge the existence or seriousness of Covid-19. To them, malaria has a bigger body count than Covid-19 so all this talk about Covid-19 is useless. If you are of this view, let me give you a little lecture about something called a health system. Such a system consists infrastructure, personnel, resources and policies among other things. With Covid-19, the thing you should be worried is not just your death or the death of your loved one. You should also worry about the capacity of the health system to handle the pandemic. If we get many people infected, some will have severe illnesses that may require admission. Health workers will get infected and need to be isolating to an extent that there will be no one to attend to that malaria patient that you are worried about. There will hardly be people to attend to other medical and surgical emergencies. I could on and on but before you propagate stupid arguments, you might want to think about this.

People who study pandemics have highlighted that our way out of this is a vaccine and otherwise the coronavirus will be here to stay. According to them, if there is no effective vaccine, the virus will continue to infect people. Some will die while the others will be building immunity and the cycle will continue. There are some people called antivaxxers; people who refuse to receive vaccines. The popular narrative out here is that this vaccine is related to the biblical 666 and that there is some sort of microchip which is a satanic tag in the vaccine. I will not give my theological perspective here, but I would like to say that this could never be wrong. I was disheartened to see a clip of some area in Malawi where school was disturbed because someone alerted the pupils that there were people who had come to give them the Covid-19 vaccine. If I remember well, the Secretary for Health mentioned that we may get the first batch some time in June and it would be for health workers and other essential personnel. I am not sure as to where people got this information that the vaccine was in from but somehow, they disturbed school proceedings. Now this is unfortunate because we are already seeing resistance to the vaccine, but more so because people are acting on misinformation. How would someone cause a commotion over a vaccine when we do not have a single vial of the same?

I could go on typing this but one thing that I have learnt from the President, the Minister of Information and one friend who works in a mental health facility is that we need to accept the situation we are in with positivity. At this point, there will be so much information flying in all directions. We will keep seeing people we know, and love die, and people will be posting about the friends and family they have lost. We need not to panic. Our way out of this is prevention and positivity. If we panic, we may end up suffering other things other than Covid-19 itself. If we can and if we need to, we must stay away from negative publicity and we must not propagate negative news on Covid-19. Not everyone may be strong enough to handle it. Also, avoid spreading misinformation.

Many will be suffering from Covid-19 but will not tell you as I learnt last week. Random checks on several friends revealed that I had 6 friends in isolation. Check on your friends and family and encourage them to practice preventive measures. For those who are sick, encourage them and if you are people of faith, invoke divine intervention while you are at it. Remember, though, that prayer is not a substitute for preventive measures. It is no time to panic, but at the end of the day, it is also not the time to be laid back about preventive measures. We need a balance.

Covid-19 is among us and it is real. We have been singing the songs about the preventive measures and it is imperative that we practice them. When we do not have information, it is good to contact reliable sources and it is our duty to prevent the spread of misinformation. Whenever we have symptoms, it is good to get testes as this is not just about us but also about protecting others. We do not want to overwhelm our already ailing system by flooding it with Covid-19 cases. Prevention should be a natural thing. You do not need to have a death in the family for you to start taking this seriously; you do not need a Kiki Camarena.

I am looking forward to the nest presidential address and to the new guidelines from the relevant ministries. While I may not have an opinion on what to do with schools and I am hopeful that people come up with the best decision, I would like to propose that we shut it with the sports activities. I mean. TNM Super League? We can do better than that.

And you know what? The virus stays in the host. If the host moves, the virus moves. If a person without the virus leaves a safe haven and moves to the place where a host is, you know what will happen. Ad the Director of the World Health Organization said, we need to treat decisions of where we go and not as matters of life and death; because they are.

Stay safe, everyone.