Red alert

Tough fight: A frontliner taking a break after a long day at one of the hospitals here.

DO you remember when the world was losing its mind over how bad the Covid-19 crisis in India?

There were fears that the nation was on the brink of total collapse, with its healthcare system being completely overwhelmed.

I’m sure we all remember the extremely disturbing pictures and headlines.

In Malaysia, we may not be seeing similar pictures or headlines being splayed all over our newspapers (yet).

But hopefully we don’t reach that stage before we start taking drastic action.

In Malaysia, we have struggled a bit with freedom of the expression. We also have a situation where civil servants (including medical frontliners) often fear to speak up because of the repercussions they may face from the authorities.

Against this backdrop, we may have to ask ourselves: should we be more worried about the Covid-19 pandemic in Malaysia?

I have never been an alarmist. And I don’t like it when people are being unreasonably alarmist.

As part of my job however, I read the news constantly, and I monitor social media, and Whatsapp groups as closely as I can.

And I gotta say: It’s not looking good.

I am reminded of Avatar: The Last Airbender (minor spoilers ahead).

When Team Avatar reaches the great metropolitan city of Ba Sing Se, they are shocked to find that its citizens do not even know that there is a war waging right outside their city walls, with invaders intent on taking over the city.

Real power in Ba Sing Se resides in the city’s secret police, the Dai Li, who have gone through great lengths to keep any knowledge of the war outside the walls a secret from the public.

This gave rise to a phrase which reached meme status: There is no war in Ba Sing Se.

We can’t adopt this attitude. People will lose their lives.

The last thing I would ever advocate is panic.

Panic is not helpful. Panic will not save lives.

But there is a very good chance we have swung too far away from panic and into nonchalance.

The Dai Li found an ignorant public easier to control.

We must not make this mistake. The authorities must provide steady leadership at all times, and not themselves be overtaken by panic.

At the same time, they cannot act as if there is no war in Ba Sing Se. This is going too far in the other direction.

If the authorities are lax in their attitude, the rakyat will be lax in their attitude.

And if both the authorities and the rakyat are lax, the Covid-19 storm will drown us all.

At this stage of the pandemic, when we now have more cumulative confirmed Covid-19 cases per million people than India, we should all be acting more concerned than we are.

There are reports of more and more companies now getting MITI letters allowing them to operate.

There is a lot of buzz about factory clusters, but very little transparency as to which factories are actually allowed to open and why.

Without that transparency, it is understandable if the public are discontent, angry, and frustrated. Without proper and transparent information, people tend to assume the worst.

The public can certainly accept that some essential industries need to operate, but if it is not proven that only such essential industries are allowed to operate and not others, then all sorts of public resentments may emerge.

Perhaps most important of all, we should allow medical frontliners to speak freely about the challenges they are facing.

Instead of issuing relentless reminders that they have to censor themselves, these frontliners must be free to tell us what is really happening on the ground.

Messages and news reports are already circulating talking of how CPR is being done on the floor, oxygen and beds have run out, and patients who literally cannot breathe are being forced to wait outside of Emergency Departments.

If frontliners are saying they are having real trouble coping with the number of cases, and that the situation is truly serious, then we must take them seriously.

If we fail to do so now, we may not be able to do anything when it is too late.

We as the public must also play our part. It currently feels that many people still think it is fine to go around visiting many friends and family, or go out for non-essential reasons.

My guess is that the public really does not have a good sense of how widespread the Covid-19 situation actually is, and how many lives are truly at stake.

If the public was more aware of what was happening in our hospitals, this may effect a change in attitude.

This is a time where Malaysia truly needs proactive, dynamic, and inspiring leadership.

We need our leaders to take this matter as seriously as it needs to be, and also most of all, to lead by example.

While we don’t want panic, the alarm bells are clearly not ringing as loudly as they should be. If the whole nation is not at red alert, we will fall to the invaders at the gate.

We need to act now. Soon it will be too late. NATHANIEL TAN is a strategic communications consultant who works with Projek Wawasan Rakyat (POWR). Twitter: @NatAsasi, Clubhouse: @Nathaniel_Tan, Email: [e-mail]. #BangsaMalaysia #NextGenDemocracy.