A Brave President, A Benumbed Nation
Sarath de Alwis
“I know that I have a highly inconvenient habit of speaking what I consider to be the truth rather than saying what may be expedient at the moment.” ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin, Letter to Stalin 1929
On Tuesday 17th March, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa concluded his address to the nation with a forthright fearless statement. “This country, that’s yours and mine, is secure today.”
He exuded Confidence. Confidence makes a leader to go forward with faith. The leader’s demeanor dispels doubt amongst officials. The President in the statement embodied courage and sincerity.
He was wrong of course. There is more to national security than contending with separatist terrorists and suicide bombers. Surveillance of religious fanatics, political dissenters and blabbering civil activists is not the same as discovering, observing, controlling and containing communicable microorganisms.
Natural outbreaks of unknown disease pose challenges to national and global security. They undermine national economies, international trade and travel and, public health. Such outbreaks undermine people’s trust in their governments. Biosafety and Biosecurity are different disciplines. Bio safety is about protecting humans from germs. Bio security is about protecting germs from humans so that humans don’t infect other humans.
I have said it before. I will say it again. I did not vote for Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksa. I do not want him to get a rubber stamp parliament at the next parliamentary elections. I would be happier if he does not get a parliamentary majority at all. An efficient no nonsense executive president with the patience of a Marcus Aurelius is too much to hope. Last I heard, hoping for accountability from an elected President was not unpatriotic or treasonous.
Although I question his purpose, I do not doubt that he is a purposeful president. We must appreciate his sincerity. We must comprehend the source of his confidence.
In these scary uncertain times, exploring the source of his courage and the fount of his sincerity is the point of departure of this essay.
After his address to the nation, on 18th March, the President made some consequential remarks at an official strategy meeting.
“As a country which did not go through a lock-down even during the 30-year war, there is no need to go for a lock-down in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. The country needs to function.’
As Defense Secretary under President Mahinda Rajapaksa, he reminded the gathering, he was able to bring the war to an end without shutting down any area.
We managed to defeat LTTE terrorism unlike other countries in the world. Other countries may have the best medical facilities, but we managed to cure infected people with our efforts.’
The gazette declaring COVID-19 as a quarantinable disease under the Quarantine and Disease Prevention Act was issued on March 20th.
At the time of writing this essay, the government has extended the police curfew until 27th March. We don’t look for the light at the end of the tunnel. We don’t know the length of the tunnel.
When he said that the nation was secure, the President was earnestly erroneous and felicitously fallacious. Bio safety of the nation was seriously breached. Our Bio Security was severely undermined.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is not the first head of state to miscalculate the ferocity of the spread and to misjudge the scope of the e horror that the COVID-19 pandemic would unleash on a global scale.
Xi Jinping the President of China was ahead of him.
On 31st December 2019, the Chinese President heralded the new year by delivering the longest speech he has made since he attained supreme power as President for life.
Xi Jinping dismissed pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and asked the great people of China to look ahead for challenges and opportunities in 2020.
He promised, they would win a decisive victory in eliminating poverty. He called it a milestone significance in realizing the first centenary goal.
He carefully avoided reference to the mysterious pneumonia reported by health officials in Wuhan in Hubei province. As he was speaking, the Chinese government was alerting the World Health Organisation. The people of China were in the dark.
Xi Jinping wouldn’t allow some odd pestilence in Wuhan to unnecessarily worry the people of China.
The baffling new pneumonia virus had been noticed by Li Wenliang a self-effacing ophthalmologist at the Wuhan central hospital. On the App WeChat he discussed the virus that intrigued him, with some of medical school batchmates. Around seven patients were infected with an unspecified corona virus. It reminded him of the Sars virus.
This innocent exchange on WeChat landed the poor eye doctor in serious trouble. The local police questioned him and reprimanded him for his curiosity that was professional to him but inconvenient for the all-powerful party apparatus.
He went back to work and contracted the unknown virus himself.
In the following two weeks, the Wuhan hospital authorities claimed that matters were well under control.
But viruses are not deterred by despotic presidents. Unchecked the virus spread with the speed and consistency that nature intended for it.
On 20th January President Xi finally and publicly acknowledged the outbreak. The virus should be resolutely contained, he decreed.
Please note. These Presidents big or small are very resolute in what they do.
On 23rd January Wuhan was placed in a lockdown. On 26th January Sri Lanka established our own task force to combat the virus.
We discovered the Chinese lady infected with the virus on 27th January. She was admitted to the IDH and recovered fully.
Our lady Minster of Health, daintily oblivious to the impending load of crap that will soon hit the fan, gave her a bigly big kiss and she left the island on 19th February.
Sri Lanka had expressed its solidarity with China in its hour of discomfort. Sri Lanka did not know the peril, the big brother of road and belt fame was really in.
Back in China the Covid-19 virus followed its own dynamics. Wuhan the epicenter of the pandemic is known as China’s Detroit. It is home to hundreds of auto parts suppliers. On 12th February, Germany confirmed two cases of coronavirus infections in the southern state of Bavaria. The two new cases of coronavirus infections were detected among staff at an automotive plant in the Starnberg district west of Munich.
A Chinese employee of the auto parts maker Wabasso had tested positive for the virus upon returning to China following a visit to the headquarters near Munich. The employee apparently infected several German colleagues during the visit. That is the problem with the virus. It is carried by people who do not show any signs of the infection.
In Wuhan city, corpses lay unattended on pavements. The Guardian newspaper refers to a woman on a balcony of a luxury tower block striking a gong and crying to the heavens “My mother is dying, rescue me!”
Li Wenliang the ophthalmologist was by this time lying on his deathbed. He was a loyal party member. That did not stop him from doing what he thought he must do. He spoke about the official failure of the state to impart essential and vital information about the virus to the public.
He told the Beijing based journal Caixin something that will outlast the horrid memories of the pandemic as one of the unscalable summits that the free human spirit could reach in the last reflexes of a dying brain. “A healthy society cannot just have one voice.”
Tyrants can dream of neatly arranged societies that will work to a dead beat. But a vibrant harmonious human experience must have a ‘plurality of voices’ and not the single croak of a tyrant.
I am 77 years old. I have undergone coronary bypass surgery ten years ago. A recent angiogram has shown two blocks which the good doctor with the reassuring name ‘Vivek’ says could be managed by medication.
My pendulum swings. Unless it comes to a pause I would like to live, to see my bright grandchildren finish university in particular ‘Bins’ who will attend Cambridge next year. With great patience I explained to her that we should not hold Cambridge responsible for GL. Just as Pandemics, aberrations happen to visiting fellows of Cambridge as well.
I don’t wish to be asphyxiated by Covid-19 induced pneumonia. So, I scrupulously observe the lockdown. There is plenty to learn on the internet.
Two medical anthropologists Marcia C. Inhorn of University of California, Berkeley and Peter J. Brown of , Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia have produced a paper in 1990 under the ambitious title -The Anthropology of Infectious disease.
