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| Dr Shafiq Sit |
As I highlighted in my last
post, the finger pointing against China is now showing the opposite, that on
the contrary China has managed to get a bit of a foothold in the battle against
this invisible enemy, which for whatever reason is blind too. Blind because it
does not differentiate its victims, claiming even the Prime Minister of Great
Britain and everyone's favorite actor Tom Hanks. Many who have done good and
volunteered in this fight such as doctors and nurses have also become
casualties and fatalities of the virus's blindness to goodness. Many died and
more will have to sacrifice themselves in this first pandemic plague of the
21st century. Yes, this is only the first of many to come. Why do I think that?
Just looking at my tropical
fish aquarium, I remember why now I have only several fishes in the tank. I had
learnt my lesson of not being too enamored of the many beautiful colors and
interesting shapes of the fishes until I forgot about Number One. The last time
I overwhelmed the tank with so many fishes they started to develop white spots,
green spots, rainbow spots and what not, and eventually the water habitat was
infected and sure enough, all the fishes died. Similarly, infections like
Covid-19 are symptomatic of the state of hygiene in our habitat Earth which we
have no one else to blame but ourselves if we choose to over-crowd it or choose
to screw it up for ourselves.
So returning to this famous
letter "c", Statistics can prove anything. If we follow
statistics per se, it would seem that it is safer to go to the moon than to
cross the street. Number of people that have died going to the moon is of
course far lower than the large numbers who have died jay-walking. Yet we
cannot conclude that it is safer to traverse to the moon on any known vehicle
to mankind. With this in mind, the statistics on Coronavirus is misleading.
Certain countries that have the higher numbers do not mean that it is
automatically safer elsewhere. It depends on the rate of testing in these other
countries. If they are testing only 5 patients per day, then in one year they
would have tested only 1825 patients and that would be their maximum number of
possible Covid-19 cases.
The significance of this
"c" is then obvious. We need to increase the rate of testing to the
maximum if we ever hope to arrive to a real number approximating the true
number of infected individuals in any given society. If for whatever reason,
any government or regime believes (albeit shortsightedly) that by testing
slower they look better, then we better just give up this fight. It has to be a
coordinated and collective effort to beat the common enemy. In fact, the new
black should be which country is testing the fastest (at the highest real
number for "c"). Notwithstanding if it has the highest number such as
the U.S.A. at the time of writing, their Administration should in fact be
praised alongside the manner in which they responded. Are they responding
actively, coherently and responsibly to this great pandemic challenge? What are
the results in terms of their healthcare responses i.e. numbers of ventilators,
number of patients recovered, etc? Some governments are praising themselves for
testing 20,000 patients, and some aiming for 50,000 patients per day. There is
no magic number except to say that it depends on the population base, the
demographics and the spread and vastness of the country in question.
So what is the solution?
Unfortunately, we have no solution as we have no vaccine yet. And precisely
because we don't, that's why it is imperative we should be testing like there
is no tomorrow, so that we actually narrow down the spread of this disease. In
this second-best world, we can be sure the next Covid-21 or Covid-22, fully
mutated and re-energized, might rear its ugly head again. It would have
probably emerged somewhere in 2020 but we will only find out about it in late
2021 just like all the hullabaloo now in 2020 when it is termed Covid-19 (19
being the shortform for 2019). So sad that this is the world we live in,
despite all the quick almost instantaneous modern gizmos and fantastic
technological innovations like the many instant messaging services, the
truly important news still arrive late. If only President Donald Trump in his many 3
am tweets last year had taken the time to tweet just once asking American folks to go for testing - many of the world populace would have
followed suit and got themselves tested already.
What can we do now? For all the
systemic failures of mankind, we can start by preserving Mother Earth - by making
our planet more sustainable. In the meantime, we must increase the rate of testing
for this Covid-19 pandemic to that of the "c" in Einstein's equation,
i.e. to near the speed of light. In layman's term, test as fast and as many
people as you possibly can in the shortest time, and keep doing this until
there is no one left to test.
Yes, here in our country we are worried that the discovered cases is so low in numbers. Must be something to do with the slow rate of testing. We need more test kits to do mass testing.
ReplyDeleteGovernments should listen!!!
ReplyDeleteLooking back one week after your post, it is apparent that mass testing was the best possible solution. Perhaps governments of the world can still salvage the missed opportunity with the rapid test kits that are being produced now.
ReplyDeleteLooks like you’re right. �� they are testing like crazy now but not all countries have the equipment.
ReplyDeleteYour argument for countries to have increased rate of tests is interesting, but what is the rate of scale of your suggestion of mass testing? Plus, have you considered what happens after a person is tested positive Covid-19? A country that implements mass testing on its population may not necessarily have the facilities to cope with the sudden spike of hundreds of thousands of patients.
ReplyDeleteDear Dr Sit,
ReplyDeleteIn Japan, a directive from the country's leader is not the most effective strategy to prompt the people to undergo mass tests. Even if our Prime Minister was as active on social media as American President Trump and his 3am tweets. Only peer pressure, a culture observed especially among the working level salarymen, that will move Japan to achieve the desired "C" of your equation.
Here in India, no point testing so much because the sick ones will end up dying anyway. We have no money for the poor.
ReplyDeleteMore more testing required but results must make fast so the infected dont go away spreading virus while waiting for result. Korea my country very fast.
ReplyDeleteHey they should have listen to you. Wasted the whole month of April and half the month of May. Only today they are going to test everyone that is 11 million people all of them in Wuhan City.
ReplyDeleteWell said! Test strategically as many as possible as the majority of those infected are asymptomatic. But also treat everyone equally, especially the politicians, everyone exposed or possibley exposed HAS to quarantine, lead by example. We are now treading a very fine line of dealing with surging infections and trying to keep the economy reasonably moving. Sad when we had come down to literally single digits of daily new infetions.
ReplyDelete