Let’s get smart to beat this smart virus

The world is facing a very smart enemy in Covid-19. It enters your body undetected in order to spread to another body.

Covid-19 can pass through immigration, tracking systems, even the thick walls of the world’s top corridors of power.

To find the infected, there has to be testing, testing, and more testing.

The more we stay immobile and the more tests we conduct, the better our chances of buying time as we wait for a vaccine, as we have been given a host of social and financial containment measures.

Among Covid-19’s biggest casualties is money. Money has become a scarce resource for everyone, including the government who has had no choice but to break open its piggy banks.

Governments around the world have a delicate balancing act to pull off.

They have to protect their citizens from getting infected while treating the sick using limited resources.

They also have to reserve money to ensure that food supplies are adequate and medicines are available, and to make sure companies and other critical services do not collapse.

People must learn to survive with what they have, and while they do that, the government has to strategise and adjust stimulus packages from time to time to keep the nation afloat.

Most governments try hard to ensure that businesses stay afloat and workers are paid.

In almost all countries, airlines have been grounded and the travel industry is paralysed. That more will fall is a foregone conclusion.

There will be factories without raw materials. We may have money but there will be nothing to buy.

This crisis will affect everyone. No one should take it easy. It is everyone’s responsibility now.

If you have a good idea, voice it out – but not in a way that puts someone down or for political mileage. Try not to criticise others who are doing work because at least they are doing something. What about us?

It’s easy to oppose and to come up with fancy slogans. Talk is cheap. Sometimes, ideas too are cheap. But real effective action is invaluable.

Now is not the time to create problems for governments by playing the devil’s advocate, or trying to gain political mileage or creating public mistrust. It should be given the space to focus on containing Covid-19. We, as a nation, can survive this crisis.

Timmy Say is a regular columnist with FMT.