PRIORITISE THE POOR AND VULNERABLE!

Ignorance breeds fear. Fear nudges emotion to trump reason.

- Malinda Seneviratne

The world didn’t know about Corvid-19 a few months ago. The world still knows very little. The little that is known is scary.

I can’t speak for others, but I can speak of my ignorance. I am not an epidemiologist or a virologist. I am not a relief-deliverer or a quarantine-supervisor. I am not an expert in a field relevant to combating the spread of the virus. I don’t wear lots of hats and I have absolutely no idea of what the Government should do down to the very last detail. I do not have the training to study deeply all relevant demographic information. I do not have any sense of available resources. I am not a wizard at handling logistics in the worst of conditions. I am not a world-renowned nutritionist either.

Governments are not perfect but in this crisis, at this moment, given resources, ability to deploy and coordinate Statesector personnel, the authority to design a comprehensive policy regime on all related matters etc., it’s the best bet we have. Things can collapse as they have in Italy for example. Collapse can be arrested, as happened in China. There are lessons that can be learned and there is a thing called a learning curve. Sure, the death-rate is less than in the case of other diseases, but then again the rate of spread is relatively much higher. An unprecedented situation certainly. We can pretend not to appreciate this and play pundit and/or god of course, but I doubt that’s going to help. Good intention is a good thing, but there’s also aggregate ill-intention that’s made worse by quackery. Good to remember this.