Malaysia would be in a better position in the Covid-19 pandemic if my proposals for a Parliamentary Select Committee on Covid-19 and a Covid-19 Pandemic Study Centre had been adopted
Malaysians sighed with relief at the report that there has been a fourth day of downward decline in the number of Covid-19 cases yesterday – 354 cases following 375, 489 and 691 cases in the previous three days - although they are shocked at the news of six fatalities in Sabah, probably the largest number of deaths in Malaysia because of Covid-19 in a single day!
Globally, the Covid-19 pandemic has chalked up another grim record yesterday when the global daily increase reached an all-time high of 348,774 cases.
Instead of the number of daily Covid-19 infections descending, we are seeing the graph rising ever upwards, a grim reminder that we are far from seeing light at the end of the tunnel.
When the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared Covid-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, there were more than 118,000 Covid-19 cases in 114 countries, and 4,291 people have lost their lives.
Yesterday’s global daily increase was nearly three times the global total of Covid-19 cases when WHO declared Covid-19 as a pandemic seven months ago – when it killed 4,291 people as compared to the present global fatality of 1,066,412 people.
In the United Nations three days ago, the World Health Organisation estimated that roughly one in 10 people may have been infected with the coronavirus, leaving the vast majority of the world’s population vulnerable to the Covid-19 disease it causes.
This is a mind-boggling figure as it would mean that 780 million people are infected with Covid-19 as the world population is 7.8 billion – which is a far cry from the recorded Covid-19 estimate.
Countries all over the world are worried about a second wave of the Covid-19 epidemic, except the United States which has not emerged from its first wave of the Covid-19 epidemic although it leads the world with over 7.8 million cases and over 217,000 fatalities.
Today’s Wall Street Journal carried the shocking report that months before travel bans and lockdowns, Americans were transmitting the virus across the country.
The Wall Street Journal interviewed disease detectives and reviewed hundreds of pages of new research to piece together how the coronavirus infiltrated the wealthiest nation on earth. The latest genetic, epidemiological and computational research suggests it was spreading inside the country before anyone started looking.
In Malaysia, the country’s leadership had been negligent and irresponsible in allowing a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, just as it had been negligent and irresponsible to allow the start of the second wave at the end of February after the Sheraton Move to bring in a backdoor government.
But what is even more reprehensible is its failure to provide leadership and provide inspirational examples to the people, regardless of race, religion, region, politics, gender or age, to adopt an “all-of-government” and “whole-of-society” approach to fight and win the war against the Covid-19 virus.
I had suggested an Opposition-headed Parliamentary Select Committee on Covid-19 to monitor the public health, economic and nation building crisis of Covid-19 and the establishment of a Covid-19 Pandemic Study Centre to learn from the successes and mistakes of other nations and to keep abreast with new thinking about the Covid-19 pandemic – for example, that Covid-19 lockdowns were an overly blunt and economically costly tool.
If both my suggestions had been take up, Malaysia would be in a better position today in the Covid-19 pandemic.