Getting out of ‘Covid cave’

Monday 30th August, 2021

State Minister of Money and Capital Market and State Enterprise Reforms Ajith Nivard Cabraal has tweeted, drawing everyone’s attention to the adverse consequences of lockdowns. He has highlighted the plight of more than four million people dependent on small and medium-sized enterprises for a living. They have been reduced to penury, the Minister has said, stressing the need to allow these businesses to function. He is sure to draw heavy fire from the proponents of lockdowns, but the concerns of those who run the economy must be appreciated. There is a limit beyond which the state coffers cannot withstand shocks.

Some economists have welcomed the extension of the current lockdown, here, and said the economy can absorb the losses it causes. However, protracted lockdowns hurt people and make economies scream so much so that even the rich countries have found themselves in a dilemma; they are unable to decide whether to go ahead with the elimination strategy (lockdowns, etc.,) or learn to live with Covid-19.

Britain made a bold decision to reopen amidst a surge in infections and despite warnings—of course, after inoculating a sizeable section of its population. A few weeks have elapsed since the experiment began, but, thankfully, the worst-case scenario health experts warned of has not played out. But it is too early to say whether the English experiment is a success, given the ability of coronavirus to spring surprises. All it takes to upend a country’s Covid strategy is the emergence of a virulent variant like Delta. Australia is planning to emulate the UK if Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s recent statements are any indication; he has rejected as absurd the idea of pursuing the elimination strategy indefinitely.

Morison says Australia will be able to claim back what Covid has taken away from it, provided it achieves 70% to 80% vaccination targets. In a recent op-ed carried in the Australian media, he has said Australia ‘must not be intimidated by the case number that will inevitably increase … we can’t stay in the cave, and we can get out of it safely’. He has sounded just like his British counterpart, Boris Johnson, who drew a lot of flak from his friends and foes alike for allegedly saying he would rather see bodies pile up than go for another lockdown.

Even New Zealand, which has gone into lockdown again owing to a Delta variant outbreak, and thereby earned pejorative sobriquets such as ‘mysterious socialist hermit nation’, ‘Covid prison’, and ‘isolated dystopia’, also does not think the elimination strategy it has adopted will be viable in the long run. Minister of Covid-19 Response Chris Hipkins has said something to this effect.

One only hopes the English experiment will be a success so that others could also get out of the ‘Covid cave’ that way.

Sri Lanka ought to learn from the radical changes other countries’ pandemic prevention strategies have undergone, over the past few months, and realise that lockdowns are not a solution in themselves, and they are only a means to an end. Nothing is stupider than to behave irresponsibly, facilitating the transmission of the virus, and then ask for lockdowns. Playing hide-and-seek with the dangerous virus has to stop. The government has well and truly banjaxed the country’s Covid-19 prevention strategy, but the people must also take the blame for the increasing death toll; if they behave responsibly, abiding by what doctors and other health experts recommend, many lives can be saved even if the government continues to blunder.

Mere battening down the hatches will not do, for Covid-19 will not pass like a flu. A lockdown must be made use of to plan and execute the next offensive against the virus, and unless it is strictly enforced and coupled with aggressive testing and inoculation, it serves little purpose. Most of all, people must resolve to adopt preventive measures and save their own lives.