LIVING WITH COVID-19?
HOW good is our understanding about living with the Covid-19 pandemic? The spike in the number of daily cases has caused panic and fear among our society.
We are also facing repetitive Movement Control Orders and an economic downturn, with the majority of us not in a good financial and social condition, which are reportedly among the main causes of the alarming increase in suicide cases.
In the past, the previous government had tried not to cause panic among citizens at the initial stage because we knew that there will be panic buying and sudden movement of people, other than a shortage of supply of goods.
And it is no different from the current situation, where the spike in the number of daily cases has caused fear and it is highly likely that this will lead to some irrational responses, like crime and wrong policies.
While the vaccination rate in Malaysia is increasing, it is not being noticed by citizens as we are afraid of the situation reportedly happening at Klang Valley hospitals, the number of deaths, the lack of staff and facilities like beds.
The way people respond to any situation will affect the outcome. If, let’s say, some opportunists were to plan a mass rally against the current government, now is a good time and the impact will surely be worse.
So there is a clear need to reconsider on how we look at this pandemic. We have been cultured with the daily announcement of the total cases, and the increment in cases means a bad and worsening condition.
However, in public health, we do actually have other metrics to assess the progression of an outbreak, for example the fatality rate, the death rate, the morbidity rate, the number of hospitalisations and so forth.
While the vaccination is taking place and speeding up, these figures like the fatality rate, the number of hospitalisations, the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admission, or better, comparing the vaccinated and the nonvaccinated ratio, will later show us the efficacy of the vaccination programme.
The most important thing is to show us that it is possible to lower the ICU admission and death rate or to reduce the severity of the outbreak, to an extent that we actually can live with the Covid-19 pandemic, even though the number of positive cases daily is still high.
Some countries, like the United Kingdom and Canada, are seeing
another spike in cases, but interestingly the death rate is not as exponential as the previous waves. Both countries have achieved more than 60 and 55 per cent vaccination rates, respectively.
Also, Singapore recently has started the new idea of living with the pandemic, and the way out of this pandemic might not be to achieve zero cases. It is perhaps to live with
the pandemic and let the economy and all sectors run.
One day, we might not need to look at the number of positive cases anymore or put that as our priority. Maybe the way out of this pandemic is not to eradicate the virus, but to vaccinate the nation and live with it, the same way we have been dealing with the other infections and the common cold.
Furthermore, there has been some promising research on treatment that are still ongoing, like the Morningsky and Reagen Cov research. All in all, vaccination does help, but we need to change the metric, and change the way we look at this pandemic.
DR MOHD SYIHABUDDIN MOHD
Kuala Lumpur