Shifting tectonic plates

The thoughts uppermost in the minds of most people these terrible days are taken up by concerns about the spread of the virus and the vertiginous spike in the number of infected persons that have led the authorities to announce a virtual lockdown and the

W“I do not accept the reasoning that “everyone’s doing it” both in Malta and abroad and praise upright persons like Italian President Mattarella who went for the jab only when it was their turn.”

e would not be us if these developments were not accompanied by venomous diatribes from the partisan sides, and in fact both sides have surpassed themselves.

An outsider or someone reading this a couple of centuries hence would probably not understand why in the face of such danger the Maltese were not more unanimous in their reactions. But this outsider and this person from 2221 would first of all have to understand how our reading of events is all the time being warped by the partisan party media overhanging everything else.

It will take time for people to start seeing facts as they are even if that undermines the partisan spin all around us. Even if the infections continue to multiply, and the deaths.

We can see some shift in public opinion but this is still glacierlike and will be quite useless in the short or medium term.

Now this is quite dangerous. We are here, at this juncture and predicament precisely because our collective behaviour these past weeks showed we did not believe we were in any danger, that we had overcome the virus, as we were told, and that wearing the mask was OK even if the mask hung from our chin or left our nose uncovered. And that meeting friends and family inside was OK even if the numbers were higher than allowed.

And of course now there’s the vaccine, in all its variants. Apart from some issues regarding one of the vaccines, which have led countries to ban its use, there is, for me at least, this dangerous, unacceptable, race to skip the queue, regardless of the patient vulnerable people waiting in orderly lines. It’s Malta at its worst, with the government complicit in the queue jumping.

I do not accept the reasoning that “everyone’s doing it” both in Malta and abroad and praise upright persons like Italian President Mattarella who went for the jab only when it was their turn.

Which reminds me – we have not been hearing of many of our leaders getting it. Is that because they’re still in the queue or is it because they skipped the queue and are ashamed to admit it?

Many alternative ideas have been shared – such as that all Gozo be given the vaccine all at once or that obese persons, especially males, be given priority given the virus’s predilection for such people but none have been accepted. It’s clear the powers that be prefer the diabolical rush we can see today.

And so, we lurch from crisis to worse crisis, learning nothing on the way and destroying people and lives.

But just to show us there’s always a worse situation than our previous worst, we had this past week terrible claims coming from court about the plan to killed Daphne Caruana Galizia with a former minister and other persons being mentioned. Should not the police be already investigating such claims? And should not a commission of inquiry be appointed to investigate the cesspool that seems to have been Castille under Joseph Muscat?

Having been elected specifically to ensure 'continuity', Robert Abela is or should be, already under investigation, by public opinion if not by the appropriate authorities in this tinpot island where the PM is king.

Obviously the above statement will not be accepted by those whose TV set is daily listening to One News and Karl. In a country with no autonomous public opinion and with partisan stations and where the supposedly main station peddles soft news only is it a mystery that so many people refuse to accept what is so clear to many others?

It’s exactly why we are passing through this infernal replay of where we were a year ago, with more than 300 dead, with a tourism industry broken beyond repair and now so many people depending on government’s handouts.

With the country being Robert Abela’s grand jury, he must understand that if he acts as the ’continuity’ chief he just cannot begin to heal the country from the toxins left by his predecessor.

The efficient virus was without doubt, for quite some time, assisted by a practically inexistent enforcement. Until last week, substantial gatherings around a number of bar outlets were definitely not monitored with any strain of virus present having a practically free rein. The high Covid infection rate is also a consequence of all this.

The virus is thus not just more efficient, it has also encountered a lax enforcement which together with Covid-19 fatigue have made its proliferation much easier. Matters were also not made easier as a result of overoptimism and back-to-normalsoon messages. These messages together with the denigration of warnings on the potential impact of additional waves of virus infection has led us to the current state of play.

It is only thanks to the hard work of the medical personnel that matters are not much worse. One only hopes that lessons are learnt and that errors of judgement are not repeated. In the prevailing circumstances, the only permissible errors are those made on the side of caution.

The financial support which government has provided to a number of sectors, which support has been increased and extended, has certainly been helpful in the short term. While prioritising the health of all we can also use this downtime to plan for the future, a post-Covid future.

The vaccination programme is a reasonable source of optimism even though the light at the end of the tunnel is not visible yet.

Nobody contests that even as a result of Covid-19, the economy is in tatters, not just the Maltese economy, but possibly the world economy! The national debate should, at this point in time, be focused on how we ought to proceed into the future. Do we rebuild the past or do we take this unique opportunity to reshape the future?

The education of future generations has been dealt a severe blow as at the end of this Covidphase

at least two years of formal education will have been wiped out. Online education has certainly been of considerable help even though it is no substitute to the direct contact between our educators and students. This applies to all levels of education but more importantly at the primary and secondary school levels. It would be indeed unfortunate if anyone of the most vulnerable goes below the educational radar, as a result of Covid.

Recovery will definitely not be easy.

A positive aspect of the tools utilised to cope with Covid was the increased reliance on digitalisation in general and tele-working in particular. We will definitely need to discuss the implications of this in considerable depth in the debate on the postCovid future as both rights and duties in this area are not sufficiently clear yet.

Covid, like other major epidemics (AIDS, Ebola, SARS) is a direct result of the mistreatment of nature. It is specifically the consequence of the human assault on biodiversity.

Nature has a habit of calling the shots whenever it deems fit. Viruses follow natural paths and until brought in check by proper behaviour on our part, they will reign supreme.

Tinkering with nature and natural processes always backfires. There is then a price to pay and we ignore this at our peril.

None of us, most probably, has consumed infected meat from bats or chimpanzees. However, we tinker with nature in other ways, which, in the longer term are just as lethal as viruses which jump from bats to man.

Covid has shown that nature runs roughshod over an economy which is disrespectful to the ecology and eco-systems. Nature always has the final word. Can we possibly learn the lesson this time?

In the coming weeks when hopefully matters are clearer it would be opportune if we embark on planning the future, together. Our future requires a green plan which is both fair and sustainable: A Green New Deal. A future which does not repeat past errors, but which instead seeks a heathy re-establishment of the links between man and nature. Too much damage has been caused over the years through the rupture of our links with nature in an effort to conquer and domesticate it. The future does not lie in man’s violent control of nature but rather through working in partnership with it.

After all this is what sustainability is all about.