CORONAVIRUS: AVOID CROWDS LIKE THE PLAGUE!
THE FIRST strategy is containment. Terms like “lock-down” come to mind.
It is enforced seclusion, and a lot easier to enforce in a totalitarian state than in one that enforces “civil liberties”. Call it “tough love”. It seems to have worked in China, curbing the spread of Covid-19.
The second strategy is “mitigation”. A term that is easier to understand is “social distancing”. That’s a much nicer word than “quarantine”!
Do your best to observe selfquarantine scrupulously.
Face masks will not protect you from catching the virus from someone else. Their value is in protecting other people when the wearer coughs or sneezes. Protect yourself by washing your hands – often. Preferably with disinfectant soap.
Also, wipe off your cellphone and your keyboard regularly. They are in constant touch with your fingertips.
Instead of shaking hands, which can be hazardous to your health, touch toes with other people! It’s a kind of soccer greeting! Speaking of which, two behaviours have to be red-carded.
The first red card is for scapegoating. We already hear of the derision of Chinese people among us. The Jews were blamed by many for the outbreak of the Great Plague. And during the Spanish flu epidemic, it was derisively called “the French disease” by the Italians and “the Italian disease” by the French. You get the picture.
No one is sure where the Spanish flu originated. Some think that is was an experiment in biological warfare the scientists failed to control, on its way to deployment on the front.
The recent death of renowned Canadian researcher Frank Plummer in Nairobi started rumours that Covid-19 may also have its origins in bio-warfare. Plummer worked in the same National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada, from which Chinese biowarfare agent Xiangguo Qiu and her colleagues smuggled the Sars coronavirus to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology – where it is believed to have been weaponised and leaked.
The second red card is for harmful transmission. Yes, just as a knife that is useful in the kitchen can suddenly serve as a lethal weapon, so also with pestilence.
Remember that the bubonic plague originated in Mongolia. It was carried across Asia by Mongol soldiers. As Mongol soldiers started dying, Jani Beg started catapulting them over the city walls of Jaffa.
Sure enough, those under siege inside the city wall started dying. People escaped on ships – that sailed into European harbours. Thus came the “Black Death” to Europe.
It was not the people who transmitted it, nor the rats that infested their ships, not even the fleas on the rats. It was a small bacterium that the fleas carry quite naturally.
In Africa, there have been plenty of cases of “HIV-endangerment”. That is, of either intentional or reckless (but certainly harmful) transmission.
This perverse practice has been outlawed in many African countries, as one of the various prevention strategies. It has been successfully prosecuted as well in a number of countries.
Stephens works for the Unembeza Desk at the Desmond Tutu Centre for Leadership. He writes in his personal capacity. A full version of this article can be found at www.voices360.com
“No one is sure where the Spanish flu originated