When religiosity kills

Friday 13th August, 2021

The government is coming under pressure to close the country again. Lockdowns are a frightening proposition, given the heavy economic costs they entail, but it is doubtful whether there will be any other way of containing the pandemic. The Covid-19 death toll is climbing steadily; it reached 156 yesterday. The healthcare system is facing an unprecedented capacity crunch. Medical oxygen is in short supply, according to media reports. (A few months ago, this newspaper warned of a possible oxygen shortage due to the rapid increase in Covid-19 infections and called for action, but the knee-jerk reaction of the health authorities was to claim that the country had the capacity to meet its oxygen needs. Today, they are going hell for leather to import oxygen! If only they had acted with foresight, and taken action to avert a shortage of the life-saving gas.) Makeshift mortuaries are coming up near hospitals, where the corpses of pandemic victims are piling up, unclaimed. Crematoria are working beyond their capacity, so much so that they may even conk out before long.

Unfortunately, there are many Sri Lankans who help accelerate the spread of the pandemic, albeit unwittingly. Prominent among them are the misguided religious devotees, who gather in large numbers and perform ritualistic acts of worship, exposing themselves as well as others to the highly transmissible Delta variant of coronavirus. One such mass gathering was reported from the Eastern Province, the other day. Curiously, they are holding these events with impunity while other people are being arrested and hauled up before courts for not wearing masks. Is it that the writ of the state still does not run in some parts of the country? The police and the public health officials in the areas where such blatant violations of quarantine laws have occurred, must be made to explain why they could not prevent the super-spreading events that have caused public outrage.

What the overly religious people flouting the health guidelines in the name of rituals ought to realise is that there will be only health workers to save them if they contract Covid-19. They should also bear in mind that if they go the way of all flesh due to the pandemic, nobody may be able to perform funeral rites for them.

One’s freedom to practise one’s religion without taking unnecessary risks during the current public health emergency has been guaranteed. All mainstream religious institutions are acting very responsibly and have called upon the public to abide by the health regulations. They have been conducting religious events without the participation of devotees, but, sadly, there are some people who cherish the delusion that their faith alone can protect them, and therefore they throw caution to the wind and ask for trouble. They should be told that even a large number of pious priests belonging to all faiths have died of Covid-19, the world over.

The heath authorities and the police should seriously consider telling the heads of all places of worship, especially in the provinces, in no uncertain terms that they must not facilitate the spread of the pandemic by holding religious ceremonies with the participation of devotees; noncompliance must be severely dealt with. Legal action must be taken against all those who participate in religious festivals in violation of the health regulations, and the devotees who get infected must be quarantined in the places of worship concerned at no cost to taxpayers.

Pandemic control is the preserve of science. Only vaccines and good health practices can save people from Covid-19. Scientific experiments are still going on. It is hoped that the World Health Organization’s Solidarity clinical trial, which has entered a new phase with three new Covid-19 candidate drugs, will reach fruition.