The elephant in the room

Should we open or close the country/economy with regard to Covid-19?

by Dr. Sumedha S. Amarasekera

Virtually all the articles, news bulletins, discussions that I have read and watched with regard to Covid -19 do not seem to address the obvious obstacle in our management pathway of Covid 19. The elephant in the room to me is the absolute contradiction in terms of what one must do to safeguard oneself and the country and what one must do in order to ‘boost the economy’ of the country.

To safeguard oneself one needs to practise social isolation as much as possible. Be confined to one’s house. Only venture out to obtain what is urgent/important and essential for one’s ‘survival’. That is what we are advised to do over the news and informational service TV/radio. The required list gets distilled down to essential food (and water) and medicine. No unnecessary trips. No more ‘shopping. No eating out. No holiday travel. No entertainment, etc.– which is a death knell to the economy. So, the question that needs be to first answered is, can we reconcile this contradiction? If so, how do we reconcile it?

In my opinion these two issues of safety and economy can only be reconciled at a practical level if we remain isolated. This concept of isolation works equally well whether one considers it in terms of geography or economy. For apart from internet/digital content all other goods and services need to be delivered physically at the end of the day to the consumer.

In the absence of a proven /effective vaccination, the only method of ensuring that there is no spread of the virus- absolute safety- is a ‘lockdown’. Strict quarantine to be implemented on anyone who enters the country/zone. After a period of time, there would be no virus in the community. We (Sri Lanka) achieved this status somewhere around June /July of this year. Please note I am referring to the absence of any new cases i.e. patients showing symptoms of Covid-19 and testing positive for Covid-19, presenting from the community for over a two-month period. If Covid-19 had spread among the community a positive case should have appeared from the community during that time. The fact that there were positive cases in quarantine does not count, as they are in quarantine because of this very fact. The moment we ‘opened our borders’ and the virus could come from overseas, we lost our protection. Thereafter after it was only a matter of time before the Covid-19 started to spread and began to appear from the community as we have witnessed at this point in time.

Once the country/zone is free of Covid-19 following a lockdown /quarantine, it can get back to normal without the need for any precautions as the infective agent i.e. Covid-19 is no longer present though the vector i.e. Human being, is present. Much like the situation we have achieved with regard to Malaria. The mosquito is here but not the disease. The economy will get boosted within this context at a domestic level. Selling and buying of locally manufactured stuff, home garden cultivation, local tourism, etc.

However if this status is to be maintained and one wants to open the country to international trade (put aside tourism) every single person who comes from abroad and more importantly every single person who gets in contact with any such person needs to be quarantined before allowing to mix with the rest of the community. Which means, every single staff member working at the airport, harbour, etc., needs to be quarantined. The logistics of doing this over a period of time while maintaining a strict barrier between these groups and the rest of the country would be an extremely complex procedure. This scenario also assumes that all the products that are coming from overseas are virus free or they in turn have to be stored in isolation till they become virus free. Which is why I said I do not feel that at a practical level one can open the country and remain ‘safe’.

The reality is that probably we will need to remain open in some manner as we are not self-sufficient and also according to the prevailing economic advice ‘we need to remain open’. The point I want to make is that if the country were to remain open in any sort of manner, Covid-19 will spread and there will be deaths due to it. This phenomenon has been witnessed all over the world. You can control Covid-19 with quarantine and ‘lockdowns’, but once these are lifted and you allow a new source of the virus to enter; it will spread again. This cannot be avoided. Provided that all else is equal the degree of a country’s openness will determine the speed at which the disease spreads. ‘Another wave’ will appear as we saw here and now what is happening in Europe. It has to be understood that masks, social distancing, washing hands, etc., will only slow down the spread of the virus – the so-called flattening of the curve – but it will spread. Once it starts spreading people will get sick and a percentage of them will succumb to this disease. This is the reality.

To put it differently, within the current context it would be impossible to boost the economy without concomitantly increasing the spread of Covid-19. For example, open the country to tourism. The more tourists that come, the more places they visit, the more they shop, the more they interact with us, the better it is for the economy. The spread of Covid-19 will also match the pace of this boost in economy secondary to the influx of tourists.

This reality i.e. the fact that keeping the country open and boosting the economy while being ‘safe’ is irreconcilable, needs to be told to the people. The public need to be made to understand that there is no getting around this. It is imperative that all ‘stake holders’-for lack of a better word-are on the same page on this. The government should come out and explain this, laying down the ‘ground rules’ so to speak. The spokesmen for the different aspects of the health sectors need to stress this point; not just raise grave concerns that the disease could be spreading. The Opposition has a vital role in this. Firstly, they need to acknowledge the reality of this situation and ‘endorse’ the government. Then they need to provide constructive criticism. They also need to act as a responsible opposition; refrain from painting this picture that if they were in power there would be no problems related to Covid-19, everything would be under control and the economy would be doing back flips.

We all need to unite to find the best strategy to ‘boost our economy’ while keeping the fallout at a minimum.