Let’s Face It, Things Aren’t Working Out

Guys, we aren’t doing so well.

Malaysia isn’t doing too well. At a time when we were expecting Covid-19 cases to start coming down, we’re instead hit with a staggering 5,725 new cases in a single day. Not only is that an unwanted new record, yesterday’s numbers mean we’ve crossed the 200,000-case mark.

That puts us in the 56th spot globally in terms of highest total cases, and sixth in Southeast Asia. Malaysia’s recorded 6,536 cases for every million people, and that’s waaaay past neighbouring Indonesia and Philippines, despite them pulling in more cases overall (which is expected, considering their larger populations).

To put things into sobering perspective, Heath DG, Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah (remember a time when he could do no wrong?) had previously warned that if we don’t buck up, we could hit 5,000 daily cases by the third week of FEB! We haven’t even gone past January yet, and here we are.

Our healthcare system is breaking down, frontline workers are overworked, and sadly, many people – patricians and plebeians alike – seem to think the rules are made for others. Worse, our supposed leaders are still busy politicking, blaming the rakyat, stirring the racial and xenophobic pot, and targeting migrants to deflect the heat that should rightfully be on them.

To think it’s only been slightly over a year since the first few Covid cases reached our shores. Back then, we had a different health minister (heck a different gomen!), our healthcare system could handle the volume of cases, and we were able to hold our heads smugly high as most cases were imported ones. We even went a glorious 11 days without a single new infection!

But this was just the first wave. It’s hard not to look back to our stellar performance a year ago and play the what-if game. What if Malaysia had imposed bans on public gatherings early on? Could that have stopped the Sri Petaling mosque tabligh gathering that triggered the second wave?

What if our politicians had more sense not to trigger a change in gomen in Feb, amid a global pandemic? What if they had even more sense and decided against starting the Sabah elections? Could we have convinced the powers that be to not do away with common sense quarantine rules? Could our leaders have saved us instead of damning us by triggering the third Covid wave?

What if we treated migrant and undocumented workers better? Would that have stopped the spread of Covid in factories and detention centres? What if we had SOPs based on logic and science, and not popularity? What if we took MCO 2.0 seriously?

What if, what if…hindsight, as they say, has 20-20 vision. But even so, it wouldn’t have taken a genius even then to avoid many of the missteps that we are now paying the price for. 

And even as we tally up the ‘what ifs’, the question that looms larger is… what comes next?