Interval in hell?

Friday 1st October, 2021

The 40-day lockdown, which was not a lockdown, paradoxical as it may sound, has been officially lifted. Surprisingly, there have been significant decreases in the Covid-19 cases and fatalities. If it had been strictly enforced, it would have yielded much better results.

Nobody took the lockdown and the quarantine curfew seriously. People moved about freely; shops were open; roads were congested, and even liquor outlets and taverns were allowed to reopen towards the latter stages of the lockdown, which nevertheless worked, but this may encourage the public to throw caution to the wind when the country fully reopens today.

The government has rightly decided against easing restrictions on inter-provincial travel. Otherwise, holiday resorts in all parts of the country would have become pandemic hotspots with thousands of people converging there, as was the case in April. Restrictions on religious, cultural and social gatherings, too, must not be lifted until health experts give the all-clear.

The drop in Covid-19 fatalities was mostly due to the successful vaccination programme, and the spread of the pandemic slowed down because most private and public sector employees did not travel to work; schools remained closed, and buses and trains did not operate. The situation is bound to change when the state and private institutions reopen and public transport limps back to normalcy. There’s the rub.

Private bus operators have undertaken to adhere to the pandemic prevention protocol, but they will do so only for a few days with the police going all out to ensure compliance. Thereafter, they will revert to their old ways. People are likely to take the health guidelines for granted with the passage of time, and the country will be back to square one. We have seen this happen after the lifting of previous lockdowns and quarantine curfews.

When there are not enough buses on the road, commuters who are desperate to go to work or return home, jostle and shove to get into the few available ones, exposing themselves as well as others to serious health risks. The same goes for trains, and office and school vans. Having beaten a retreat, the virus must be waiting until these vehicles are back on roads to make a comeback. It has done so in the past, and if it is allowed to bounce back, what was gained during the ‘lockdown’ will be lost in a few weeks.

Technology has provided solutions to most of the problems the pandemic has created. Remote work is prominent among them. It has become the order of the day in the world of work, and made an enormous contribution to pandemic control by reducing the number of people travelling to work. It must be promoted as a national priority here with all necessary facilities and equipment being made available. It benefits both the employer and the employee alike. The institutions that encourage their employees to work from home deserve incentives from the state.

Lockdowns, no doubt, serve a very useful purpose. They help the health sector recover from capacity crunches and ramp up vaccination. But closing a country when the Covid-19 infections and deaths soar and reopening it when the situation improves cannot be considered an effective pandemic control strategy. Most countries have adopted this method only to get caught in a cycle of imposing lockdowns and easing them.

The UK took a bold step. It decided to take a calculated risk by remaining open after achieving its vaccination target. The British government came under blistering criticism for its move, which was also a huge political gamble. But it seems to have worked––so far so good! It should be the fervent hope of people across the globe that the English experiment will reach fruition so that other countries could do likewise, for lockdowns entail huge socio-economic costs and, most of all, are not a solution. They delay economic recovery and worsen poverty and inequality among other things.

The responsibility for pandemic control lies with everyone, and the onus is on the public to act responsibly without inviting trouble unlike in the past. Otherwise, the respite we have got with the help of the costly lockdown, which ends today, will be tantamount to the proverbial interval in hell.