Sometimes we are harsh on our own

Mmegi Editor | Friday October 30, 2020 14:51

Botswana is not spared. We have seen how tens of thousands of people died from the disease in Italy and how health systems are overwhelmed in first world countries like the U.S and United Kingdom. This shows that whether the country is developed, rich or poor, no one was ready for this pandemic looking at failures in many health responses.

Therefore, sometimes as a nation we do not need to be harsh on ourselves in the way we responded to the health crisis. In Botswana, the handling of the pandemic by responsible authorities has been called to question by a number of politicians, journalists and the general public.  Many of these claims makers are not natural scientists, as some come from the broad disciplines of social and human sciences.

There is no single formula that can deal with the disease in the absence of a vaccine. The way we respond to how the pandemic is tackled by the Presidential COVID-19 Taskforce is sometimes baffling.

The critics forget that these men and women are qualified scientists who spent many years abroad studying infectious diseases.  They made mistakes on the way and will continue making them. But, their strategies or lack of have saved more lives than our peers in the region. Through their interventions, Botswana was one of the first few countries in the world to screen citizens and tourists at points of entry.  This was even before the first case of COVID-19 was detected in the country. The taskforce also recommended the mandatory wearing of masks in public at a time when even health experts like U.S infectious disease guru, Dr Anthony Fauci, is recommending their use.   We must concede that the Botswana contact tracing is not the best, but at least the system allows health officials to track, test and isolate contacts of positive individuals.  There is room for improvement in this regard since there are loopholes that leave several cases to go undetected thus exposing many people to harm’s way, especially the elderly.  There are also cases where health officials test people and release results late thereby exposing close contacts to the disease. Comparatively, the Botswana interventions to some extent have worked despite recent spikes in the detected cases. For examples, Lesotho has lesser confirmed cases (1, 947), but the mortality rate is high at 43.  Namibia with a population of 2.5 million people, which is almost the same as that of Botswana, has 12, 675 confirmed cases and 133 deaths. Botswana currently stands at 6, 642 (Batswana 5, 285) confirmed cases and 24 deaths. Sometimes we have to pause as a society and celebrate our own. We have to take off our partisan caps and value the work our professionals are doing.  Many times rather than constructively criticising those at the forefront of the war on COVID-19, we resort to character assassination and insult the intelligence of those we sent to school.

We can’t be looking to score points when the country is at war with an invincible enemy that has decimated the economy.  We have to be cognisant of the fact that many jobs have been lost to the pandemic and lives lost in the process. It is only science that can take us out of this.

Today’s thought

“In the middle of every difficulty

lies opportunity.”

– Albert Einstein