In search of clarity in times of Corona confusion

Zubeida Mustafa*

Today we are witnessing a bizarre battle against an enemy that is so tiny that it cannot be seen with the naked eye. Yet it is formidable and has taken hundreds and thousands of lives worldwide. A lockdown is the only way of containing the virus, we are told. So I stay home. Not because of fear. My main concern is not to be burdened with the guilt of involuntarily becoming the source of infection for others.

So what do I do, I am asked. That is a million dollar question as I don’t have exciting choices that others have. With my low vision I can do some limited reading on the computer and my Kindle. And of course I also write. This was good enough in the early days of the lockdown. After a while this became quite tiresome. It got lonely without friends to meet, seminars/lectures to attend and young students to mentor. Phone calls were a consolation but after sometime they became quite functional with no substance in the conversation.

Even the eerie silence – somewhat unusual in Karachi – lost its charm. The crows and the pigeons have migrated to greener pastures. Traffic is also at a standstill making the silence even more deafening. Life seems to have become quite mechanical. And in this time of timelessness, loneliness and confusion have descended on me.

All seem to be talking at cross purposes: the federal government vs the provincial government; the doctors vs the traders and small businesses; the economists vs politicians; all these specialists vs the people. This doesn’t ease the confusion in my mind. Each of them looks at the crisis through a narrow lens. No one has learned to place the common man at the centre of life. The discourse is on the debate between saving lives or saving livelihood. Parallel runs the debate between paradise and hell sparked off by the holier than thou brigade.

So I play the number game. I compile daily the data of how many contracted Covid-19 and how many lost the battle for life in a handful of selected countries that we admire. Then I realise that we are not faring too badly, Take the UK, our former colonial masters, as an example. On 24 June the Worldometer showed that the UK’s tallies were 6285 cases in every million population and 606 deaths per million. Pakistan had 856 cases per million population and 17 died per million. So we need not worry.

This confuses me. What’s going on? I have not heard of a virologist in Pakistan. If there be such a person, he has not spoken up. I remember Dr. Viqar Zaman, my source of information on science, had he been around he would have helped clear the confusion and scepticism in my mind. I sorely miss him. He did his MBBS and then chose to do research in microbiology and opted for the classroom rather than the clinic. He was a telephone call away, always willing to answer all my questions so patiently in his quiet and polite manner. I would have asked him to explain our very low death rate compared to that in the UK. Most importantly I would have got an answer to the question that plagues my mind: Can a sensible strategy of lockdowns be drawn up without a holistic knowledge of medical science, economics, politics and anthropology?

* Zubeida Mustafa, Former Assistant Editor, Dawn, Freelance Journalist and Author, Karachi, Pakistan