n the fact that 8million of us could be infected is a serious matter!
read this then...
[again taken from NST]
DAILY DISPATCHES: To stop H1N1, follow the Mexican wave and shut down everything
2009/08/18
Azmi Anshar
GOING by the psyche of easy-going Malaysians, the whole nation has unwittingly become a petri dish to ease the spread of the A (H1N1) flu, swine flu to those of you who prefer to refer the disease by its more ominous slang. To effectively kill the spread of the flu, Malaysia may have to follow the Mexican wave - Government mandated closure of all social, educational and commercial activities. Virtually a day the Earth stood still scenario in Malaysia.
But are we up to it? Social distancing turned self-imprisonment for a stretch of six days at great economic losses to the tune of perhaps hundreds of millions of ringgit?
The notion is being bandied about already by Health Minister Liow Tiong Lai, who preferred to employ the amiable term “health curfew” for what is now a desperate “national health emergency”. The World Health Organisation has looked at the Malaysian petri dish under a social microscope and declared that eight million of us can be potentially infected. And that includes our cousins in Sabah and Sarawak.
Petrified parents, many of whom are desperately asking the authorities to shut down schools, have unilaterally stopped their children from going to lessons but let’s hope they extend their cautionary instincts to stopping their children from attending movies, mega sales, shopping malls, feasts, weddings, political gatherings and even religious congregations. If the chances of infections in schools are good, the chances of infections in public assemblage are far greater.
In effect, parents who demand closure of schools must not only quarantine their children in their rooms/houses but make sure they stay within the confines of the walls of their homes. In other words, do the cruel to be kind thing by imprisoning your kids. It would be the greatest of ironies that kids who skip schools because of the H1N1 scare gets a whiff of the virus at their neighbourhood fast food joint or a sale or kenduri they just had to go to on the insistence of their indulgent parents.
So, is anywhere safe in Malaysia? Other than the mountain top or secluded spot in the rain forests, a prison similar to the one in Kajang perhaps. Prisons might be the safest places that can shield human beings from being potentially infected by the H1N1 virus if your life is coiled around an urban/suburban sprawl. Prisons are by its physical engineering natural quarantine chambers. The very reasons why prisoners are barred from mingling with the general public are also the reasons why they are buffered from the H1N1 virus.
However, even this highly regulated protective cocoon is no longer a guarantee as long as prison guards and officials, who mingle freely with the general public, can become infected or carriers, whichever is most convenient for the virus to spread, and soon inadvertently pass it over to the incarcerated men and women.
Now the situation is scarier. No public place - pubs, restaurants, shopping malls, religious centres, offices - have the proper medical forcefield against H1N1. It’s a pervasive serial killer and doesn’t care for any socio-economic or ethnic divides. It does prefer the high risk groups of the very old, the very young, the pregnant and the disease-ridden ailed.
This also means no partying, no merry-making, no going to any place where people can meet, shake hands or hug. Everyone, from the very rich to the very poor, would have to stay put at home. On the bright side, think of all that quality family time together, doing all the simple things you have long neglected, like catching up all your reading, your DVD movies and the wife’s cooking.
On the bright side too, the healthy ones who do get infected recover within a week from the cough, cold and fever. That means that in the event of a seminal closure of public life in Malaysia to efficiently contain H1N1, the young and the strong have to be relied upon to grease the economic wheels. This is also the time to prove that the Internet economy, of working and operating from home on the computer with a broadband connection, can actually work. Telecommuting by default of a killer virus.
Emulating Mexico, only emergency/essential services remain operational. Police patrols with all precautions taken are the only people allowed to roam freely. Then there are the strict protocols: Only six people or less can enter an elevator. Press conferences on the epidemic are held in the open air.
Even the Prime Minister, an essential servicer himself to the people, may be unable go to his office and has to conduct his business with his staff in the open. His harshest critics from the Pakatan Rakyat must also support his declaration of a national shutdown. No theatrics and no playing the blame game.
Even Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak may have to anticipate that there would still be the incorrigible and stubborn who regard a national shutdown as cramping their lifestyle, like the robbers, thieves and burglars, and the typical Malaysian who just had to go out because there is nothing for them to do at home, either with their family or in solitude.
There are also the death wishers confident with the status of their health. During the SARS/bird flu epidemic in 2003, there were reports of the incorrigible who defiantly turn up for work although their bosses permitted them to take a few days off after they had returned from problematic countries like Vietnam and Hong Kong. These same people continue to exist and if ever the disease is difficult to contain, these are the people the authorities and employers must detect and blacklist.
It’s a tough decision, the balancing between human survival and commercial concerns but most right-thinking Malaysians will understand if the Government decides on the drastic option of a total shutdown. You can recover and make back the money you lost but you can’t fight a virus you can’t see, worse still if you’re dead.
