Cabin fever – dazed and depressed a month after Sheraton Move

Welcome to dystopia, my friend. The streets are largely abandoned, and a frequently grey horizon is patrolled by security forces. Food and supplies, while seemingly abundant, are being hunted down like they are on the verge of extinction. Mobility is tightly controlled. And our lives are reduced to its basic needs of water, food, shelter and clothing – with nary an end in sight.

Ok ok, that’s a bleak picture because it won’t always be like this. This is temporary – just like our last battle with the haze – and this too shall pass and when life returns to normal, it won’t be long before we’ll have forgotten all the important lessons of the partial lockdown of March and April 2020.

Right now my daily routine involves sifting through a myriad of coronavirus-related stories and chatting online with my friends and family about how they are coping with Covid-19. The only breaks are surrounding myself with music and anything that gives me laughter, which to me is a critical coping mechanism.

Still, I know I’m down with cabin fever.

Cabin fever is that distressing sense of claustrophobia or restlessness one feels upon being stuck at an isolated location or in confined quarters for an extended period of time.

I haven’t got it real bad but I did wake up the other day wondering longingly about what it would be like to be struck down by the coronavirus and never have to get up and face another bill, meeting, traffic jam, personal attack, high expectation, racist government, etc again. I brushed it off - thinking that there is far too much ahead for me to live for - but it’s getting to me more than I’d like to admit.

Apparently cabin fever can lead to irrational decisions – for example, a man leaving the safety of an isolated log cabin during a snow storm or jumping into the sea when one is on a ship struck adrift. I’m not quite sure what the equivalent is where I’m at in a condo in suburban KL, but I’m not contemplating drastic action.

It’s key to try and keep active – my second son is doing it right with skipping and boxing training and push-ups etc – I wish I had that discipline. Find ways to entertain and educate yourself - my teen daughter just cut her own hair and there’s a lot of practising on musical instruments. Everyone is catching up on reading or binge-watching shows.

After all, we’ve been denied access to most of our default escapes – it’s strange to find that the only league table I am following now is that of global coronavirus fatalities. It’s occasionally a challenge to keep tempers from boiling over – especially when it comes to who gets to use the Playstation – but by and large we have managed to get through our first world problems.

Far more alarming is the number of messages I get from groups that are struggling or stranded. Orang Asli communities, Malaysian Indians in India, groups in PPR flats, security guards, musicians – many are in deep trouble as their sources of income/food have been cut off.

I have to applaud folks like Azmyl Yunor and Shaq Koyok (and many other artistes) who made the best of a difficult situation and organised the Festival Duduk Rumah on FB live to raise funds for frontliners in the battle against Covid-19. What an awesome way to contribute, as well as alleviate the feeling of helplessness that we feel.

I’m also concerned about my parents who are in the more vulnerable age group. Both are 75 this year and were born in 1945 when the Japanese occupation during World War II ended. Next week is their 48th wedding anniversary – and it is unfortunate that it won’t be celebrated – my sister from the UK had to call off her visit.

During these difficult times, some turn to their faith with prayer, but that is not for me. The God I used to believe in as a kid doesn’t sit idly by while a death toll of 30,000 (and counting) is racked up. If a perfect storm of lockdown, water and electricity cuts, and haze goes down – believe you me, it’s not prayer that’s going to get me through.

I think what we are experiencing is an unspoken collective trauma at the loss of normalcy, sense of security and everyday connections. This has now been replaced by an immediate but relatively controllable fear involving our survival. This would, of course, be far more acute were we in the same boat as Italy or Spain or one of the other worst-hit countries.

But we are also feeling a sort of anticipatory grief about the future. Normally we push morbid thoughts aside so we can get on with life. But this virus has focused our fears. Death of loved ones, our own loss of life, a feeling that life is never going to return to being the same after this.

Needless to say, this uncertainty is not aided by the onslaught of fake news being shared on Whatsapp. It’s been so rampant that I actually gave my parents a brief lecture in determining the difference between legitimate news and otherwise, and have prepared a standard message to rebuff the fake news brigade.

Take note: Middle-aged, senior citizens, technophobes, church and neighbourhood watch groups feature prominently in the demographic – if you are in that group and happily forwarding stuff without verifying – then you are part of the problem.

But conspiracy theories aside – there are very real economic after-effects to follow from the virus and its related lockdown. Is it a recession or a depression that’s headed our way, I ask you? Will the airline industry survive the onslaught? How can our friends in vulnerable industries survive the loss of income? Will Malaysia be able to cope with record layoffs?

To me, the lesson we need to take is still that the major burden on this planet and its resources are humans. We are the ones who are living longer, destroying habitats, generating more and more toxic waste, driving other species to extinction. At some point, nature culls.

We’ve had warnings before with Sars, Mers, Ebola – one day something much faster and more ferocious than Covid-19 is going to come along.

The world has got to rid itself of foolish and dangerous leaders like Donald Trump (below), the “extremely stable genius” who squandered the two months advance notice that the US had, and is now trying to blame everyone but himself for the US being the country with the most Covid-19 cases. I believe his supporters on the lower rungs lack education and fall for his racist identity politics - while the middle-class and rich supporters are being very cynical because his policies favour their business interests.

What we need to take from this virus season is that the whole ship needs turning around. Prioritise a centralised and affordable health care system. Refocus our values so that the environment is not destroyed for short-term gain. Structure our society so as to take care of those who are marginalised.

A look at just some of the many mismanaged hospital projects (Bera, Shah Alam, Sultan Aminah, Alor Gajah) that occurred during the administration of our sixth premier Najib Abdul Razak will show us that corruption has its own immeasurable price.

We must not continue to be held hostage by those who are beholden to big business and unbridled greed. We simply cannot allow those who are short-sighted and selfish to chart our course. For the price of that is clear. And that brings me full circle to why I started to get so dazed and depressed in the first place.

Just five weeks ago, I was in Putrajaya listening to former deputy prime minister Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail and Health DG Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah giving a press briefing on Malaysia’s efforts to cope with Covid-19. Two days later - all hell broke loose in our beloved country – and I for one will never forget or forgive the irresponsibility of the power-hungry traitors who destroyed our chance of a reform government at a time when the coronavirus was just about to go supernova.

There is a surreal air about how events have unfolded since.

I have no faith in this racially-imbalanced government whatsoever. For our country’s sake, for our people’s sake, I hope to be proven wrong. Let’s see if they can lead us out of the darkness and into the light. 

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MARTIN VENGADESAN is a Malaysiakini team member.