COVID days: It is time for the Carrot

I cannot recall witnessing the government machinery of this country so active, energetic, concerted and committed in its fight against a common enemy, as during the COVID outbreak this time. The next few weeks are going to be a “make or break” phase…when we might either breathe a sigh of relief, or suffer much for a long time.

But I must share a story with you. Our house help who shares our home for 20 years got a call on her cell phone that one of her elderly aunts staying in a congested part of her hometown had died. She had been old and had a long-standing breathing problem.

To my obvious next question “Was it COVID?”, she answered that she had not been tested.

On pursuing further if there was time still before the body was disposed, as a precaution just in case, she said “It would be too much hassle… the police will land up at home, perhaps take grieving relatives elsewhere, involve expenses, and delay the last rites”.

Officials, be it of the health department, police or others, are trained to be “officious” (meaning: assertive of authority in a domineering way), something that was required to get the people of this huge populous country with diverse opinions and attitudes to do something that they had not quite been used to… follow rules.

And now when the virus is likely to spread in the community, we need to encourage people with symptoms to come forward without fear and get tested voluntarily. They need to feel reassured (not just told on TV) that they will be treated with dignity, and not hounded like "criminals”, with contacts “traced” and hunted, and habitats “sealed”, that thriller movie plots are made of.

In the UK, a COVID patient is no longer looked down upon ever since members of the royal family and the prime minister came down with it. We pray that nature does not have to demonstrate the human vulnerability of some of our authoritarian leaders to the infection to gain patients a measure of dignity.

It is now time for the carrot: easy affordable testing and a reward for coming forward and getting tested voluntarily, with an assurance that he will be well looked after if positive, could go a long way in our next phase of fight against COVID.

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