We are simply not ready for the coronavirus

Dear Editor,

I have to ask without waiting a moment longer: are we really ready to respond effectively and deal with the coronavirus issue that is now here? The second question is: do we really care to give it the priority attention that is absolutely vital right now? My answers to both questions are short and dismissive: No!

No, we are not ready. And no, we do not really care, despite all that we are saying. I am tempted to articulate that this is because of our national madness over elections, but even when I leave that off the table of consideration, I submit that, from the reports I am getting, we are not ready and we would not have been ready. I chalk this up to sloth, indifference, and the usual incomplete and inadequate outlooks that saturate the local environment.

The first alarming report was from the son of the woman who died. I understand he went public to vent and berate officials for lack of urgency, for lack of anything. The son shared that there was no follow up, no response, despite calling the hotline several days before the passing of his mother. Nobody came, despite assurances given.

Second, there was the information that came to me about a medical professional, who is usually a part of an outreach team coming here. He came over a week in advance of the team and was appalled by what he saw as to the state of our loudly proclaimed readiness. We are not ready. This medical man was so concerned about what he observed that he promptly relayed the situation as it really is in Guyana to other members still overseas, and that medical outreach team is no longer coming here. The fears, practical and reasonable and relevant-are of being infected here, and then serving as carriers of the virus back to their own locales and patients and contributing to possible exponential spread. I am aware of another medical outreach team that was due here and bound for interior locations, but which has since cancelled, possibly because of demands where they are based.

Third, there are more and more reports of hundreds of incoming passengers passing through our airport(s) without so much as a question, or interruption, or an interrogation of any sort. I understand that logistically the situation is most daunting. But what the hell are we doing? Really doing? Are we doing anything? In fact, I must ask: do we know what we are doing? Are we fully engaged in dealing with and responding to the task at hand? Or are we distracted, fatally so, with that other existential priority in our midst that is, by itself, a full-time 24-hour occupation?

So, now we are running around and scrambling around to locate hand sanitizers and face masks. The latter would be placing the medical mask on the other mask-the one from racial elections and racist reactions-that already occupies pride of place in our lives. Truly, we inhabit the realm of the living dead and don’t know what to do with ourselves, in our ass backward state of existence, or to appreciate the things really matter.

We were given every assurance that a state of readiness was in place. I beg to differ and most caustically so. For anyone who tells me that I am overreacting and that I don’t know what is in motion, I counter: then why are our responses so sluggish, if not altogether nonexistent? Where is the screening at ports of entry? Where is the urgency in local medical institutions? Where is the focus and priority in the media, including the two newspapers on which I rely and favour? I must say the coverages are almost all over the damn nonsense that is of national elections. That is what the whole sick story means to me now. It is all about party and nothing about country.

We talk of concentration and investigation of process and count and the rest, while we fail to see that we are severely inhibited at the individual and societal levels from appreciating the heavy obligations of democracy. We lack the substantive ideas of what democracy means. So, we please ourselves and comfort ourselves with platitudes about democracy and procedure, while emergencies and crisis situations develop. And we do so while we prepare to perpetuate the dictatorship of division (racial division and one way or the other) and live happily ever after.

Here it is that we face a possibly highly problematic situation and we cannot even muster the interest and the brain cells to face medical and environmental realities. Man are we a Third World society with a fifth division mentality.

Yours faithfully,

GHK Lall