There is something insidious in the ‘nature’ of the Coronavirus. Its ‘mission’ extends beyond taking lives. It seeks, a priori, to reduce us as humans, by eroding those threads that combine to fashion the foundation of our existence…our economies, our jobs, our education systems and our recreation routines, among others. In the absence of those requisites human existence will descend into an unbearable downward spiral. Apocalyptic opinion pieces doing more than just skirting the issue, are already in print. Truth be told, the Coronavirus has stripped us of that sense of predictability that is critical to the shaping of our collective existence. It is as if the virus possesses an intimate understanding of the things that really matter to us as humans, and has opted to target those for disruption with unerring accuracy.
The absence of a cure draws, what, up until now, remains an indelible line beneath whatever feeble defences we have sought to erect. Managing the malady, living with it, has been, up until now, a matter of probing steps. One such step, it can be argued, was the decision to effect a limited break in the protracted schools’ closure to enable the sitting of the Grade Six, CSEC and CAPE examinations. The decision may have had its detractors but on the basis of the available evidence and at least up until now, it will be regarded by many as a measure that appears to have worked. Still, those kinds of judgment calls, for those who must make them, will always be fraught with the risk of backfiring, giving rise to the casting of blame and requiring those who make the judgments to ‘carry the can.’ Insofar as we are still lacking a definitive curative breakthrough, those judgment calls will always be likely to go either way so that those who must make them must be prepared to face tirades of criticism with the same disposition that they embrace plaudits when initiatives work.
The harsh reality is that until some definitive cure materializes we will continue to have to work with a succession of vulnerable ‘holding positions’ in what, by any stretch of the imagination, is, frequently a risky and thankless pursuit.
Take face masks, for example; as of last week, under the now adjusted COVID-19 measures, the wearing of these in public has been elevated to the status of compulsoriness. For all that face masks remain a precaution, nothing more. One must bear in mind, too, that the wearing of face masks has, of all the various strictures, generated arguably the biggest single public pushback. Whether its elevation to compulsoriness in public places will secure a higher level of compliance than had previously obtained is something that we will have to wait and see. If, however, one were to use the prevailing public disposition to face masks as a measuring rod, there is very reason to believe that it will attract at least some measure of initial resistance.
Up until now our response to the virus remains wrapped in packages of calculated initiatives rather than iron-clad remedial guarantees. We have no choice here. That is the nature of the beast. Here in Guyana the frontline of the fight is located in what, by international standards, is our frail public health defences and in restrictions like face masks and social distancing. If these appear frightfully inadequate it is the best that we can do for now. Our underdevelopment leaves us, like so many other similarly disposed nations, dependent on comprehensive solutions which, if they are to materialize, will have to be imported.
To say that the policing of the COVID-19 measures has not been a glowing success is to indulge in understatement. There are instances in which the police have been decidedly indulgent of the transgressors. Accordingly, we can adjust the restrictions up and down until we are blue in the face, unless a corollary to those adjustments is a significantly stepped up level of enforcement, the measures themselves will amount to no more than whistling in the wind. More to the point, it is the proven effectiveness, or otherwise, of the newly adjusted measures that will serve as a guide to where we go next.
What remains the fairly widespread rejection of face masks and the proverbial thumbing of our noses at curfews and social distancing strictures (as reflected in the notoriously ill-advised Sea Wall ‘bashments’ and the all-night recreation offered by the myriad ‘speak easy’ bars) are examples of the challenges to the strictures and to the decisions on their adjustment in one direction or another. Bottom line? We are on a hiding to nowhere except there are high-levels of both law enforcement and voluntary public compliance. For its part, the police must not simply be pressed into service at the enforcement level. COVID-19 being the national emergency that it is, the leadership of the Force must be required to buy into the importance of what we face and become an emotional part of the fight against it. The strictures will not work unless those charged with effective implementation are, for whatever reason, neglectful of or indifferent to their importance of their enforcement responsibilities. Naturally, it is only fitting that they also be afforded a seat at the decision-making table.
In the final analysis, it is our ability to regulate ourselves that will determine the success of the national response to COVID-19. It is therefore as much to ourselves as to the institutions that fashion and implement the national response that we must look if we are to hold the line against a malady that seeks to dismantle our way of life, no less. It would be an exercise in the greatest folly to think that we can confront a challenge of this magnitude without making fundamental adjustments to those dimensions in our mindset that cause us to think that in the fullness of time Coronavirus will not simply fade away as quietly as it came. Its motive, one suspects, is to leave behind an ugly, even indelible footprint.
