Covid-19 runaway pandemic: Contain and Protect (CaP)
Dear Prime Minister,
I am not a politician baying to unseat you. But as the rakyat, I am so disgusted with you and your team. Each passing day we are breaking records of Covid-19 infections and casualties. Based on frontliners' testimonies, our health facilities are also facing a disaster.
If the most developed Klang Valley’s health facilities can break down, it is a matter of days before the rest of Malaysia follows suit. We now face the situation of a Covid-19 runaway pandemic. But the news trending now is of a political crisis like never before.
As the prime minister, you have to rise above all these and put the welfare of the people uppermost. Let me offer this advice for your own good. I will clarify later why I am able to do so.
The rulers, politicians or the rakyat cannot unseat you for the time being but the Covid-19 pandemic can and will certainly do; if not now, pretty soon. To avert this situation, you have to completely reverse the Covid-19 measures taken so far and turn them around on their head.
The typical approach so far has been to trace, test, isolate, and treat, coupled with lock-downs. This worked when cases were few and health facilities abundant like in March 2020. This will certainly not work now. What is the point of testing when those positive cannot be isolated and treated? The Melawati Stadium fiasco is self-evident. You bring together patients and their guardians and get them even more infected and sick.
Many positive cases are asked to be home quarantined but frankly, it doesn't work unless strictly followed. So what is the point of mass-testing and wasting valuable resources? What is the point of announcing alarming figures every day, but with no solutions, except to blame the rakyat?
What is the point of bringing in the severely sick to health facilities and leave them dying in whatever open spaces, sitting in chairs or canvas beds waiting to be attended? Many more are brought in dead as the statistics show. With the highest infectivity rate and positivity rate exceeding 10 percent, the pandemic is out of control. Do you honestly believe the rakyat are convinced you are in control of the situation?
The only thing that can help now is to strictly restrict the movement of people and vaccinate as many as possible in the shortest time. I would call this the emergency ‘contain and protect’ approach.
So please stop all these nonsense assurances and showmanship. Use all available resources and focus on vaccination only, apart from treating the sick. Set a target to vaccinate at least 80 percent of the population by end of July; three weeks will be sufficient to cover two cycles of infection. Based on what your government claims, there should be enough vaccines.
Concurrently, impose emergency lockdowns like in wartime and by this I mean curfews. The only activity allowed is vaccination and to feed the people. This should cover all of Malaysia. The rakyat will certainly cooperate knowing this short term pain will end soon and hopefully, the pandemic will be over. Please check with Kuala Lumpur and Selangor residents if they prefer this approach or a never-ending cycle of MCOs but with increasing infections.
If money is your excuse as I expect, use the RM10 billion Pemulih cash aid for this purpose. The rakyat will prefer to go hungry to finally see the pandemic over. Don't feed us slowly to keep us barely surviving to endure the pain forever.
Scars will run deep
For this to happen, you as the prime minister have to form a Covid-19 team consisting of enforcement and health professionals. Please don’t let the current ministers and bureaucrats get involved in this. They would never change their ways or admit they failed. Promote them if you want to make them happy, we don’t care. Show your true leadership and authority now.
Get a new capable team that can act like in a real emergency as in a war. You don’t need new SOPs. The enforcement team, army and police have their own SOPs to maintain the curfew. The health team should mobilise all facilities, government and private, to vaccinate as many people as possible. Get the vaccines to the people, not wait or call them to be vaccinated.
I was responsible as the head of disaster management in Asean to draft and implement the Asean Agreement on Disaster Management, and the Asean Haze Agreement. I have formulated many SOPs including civil-military coordination, mobilising resources within Asean, the United Nations and the world at large. The actions of your government for the past 16 months, with due respect, do not resemble any of the principles of disaster management. Don’t get me started on the SOPs.
Let me give you this example. When the fire is small, one tries to extinguish it. When it becomes widespread, you can only contain it from spreading and let it burn out by itself while protecting lives and property. Whether it is the fire brigade, army or rescue team, civilians - much less politicians - don’t intervene at all, especially with their brand of SOPs. We just let them do their job. We also mobilise military assets to complement the civilian assets.
This is the principle of ‘contain and protect’ I am proposing. Speed and timeliness are of the essence. A day lost means a hundred deaths, thousands of casualties and nowhere for the sick to be treated.
So please implement the emergency ordinances the way they were truly meant for. Impose the curfew and vaccinate as many people as soon as possible which means immediately.
Well, I am not sure whether you would do this. Even if you want to, your cabinet and cronies may not allow you to. If there is a better solution, by all means, do it.
Otherwise, leave it to the king who clearly decreed that the Covid-19 pandemic should be the utmost priority. The king can also call a truce between warring politicians during this curfew period until the pandemic comes under control.
Covid-19 scars run deep and last long - unnecessary deaths, suicides, long Covid, family breakups, sufferings of the infected, loss of livelihood, among others. All that will fall squarely on the heads of you and your team. It will outlast the Covid-19 pandemic. The curse will be forever on those responsible. - Mkini
RAMAN LETCHUMANAN was director, Environment/Conservation, Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment (1993-2000), head of Environment/ Haze/Disaster Management, Asean Secretariat, Jakarta (2000-2014), and senior fellow at S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2014-2016). E-mail: raman.asean @gmail.com.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of MMKtT.
✍ Credit given to the original owner of this post : ☕ Malaysians Must Know the TRUTH
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