The numbers of these last days have been shocking, not just for the number of deaths that have occurred nor just the number of infected people which has spiralled beyond control but mostly for the passive way these numbers have been announced and received by the community.

It has become almost acceptable to be killed by Covid especially if you are old and have underlying medical issues. Almost inevitable that the numbers of infections and deaths will continue to increase.

A sense of fatalism seems to have come over our people and even those who vent their frustration on Robert Abela and his incautious declarations seem to have nothing to add. People tell you it’s happening all over the world and it is generally accepted we cannot go back to a lockdown mode or we may kiss the economy or tourism goodbye.

There is a sense of inevitability, almost that it’s useless to fight the wave. That the pandemic must work its way through the population and through the world and only then will we be free of it, unless the vaccine is found before (still a rather remote possibility whatever the optimists say).

We concur, at least those not with partisan blinkers on, that the frontliners and the health authorities are doing their best. As for the political masters, opinions vary although a growing number are coming down hard on Robert Abela.

But only a few have the time and the means to study what is happening in other countries. If we do, we could at last understand why Malta now has such a high spike of infections, far out of proportion to its size.

Some blame our movida but then so do others and their infections curve is flatter. We say we have a high rate of swabbing and contact tracing, so once again the question remains: so why our high rate of infections?

Ours is a small island, easily controllable, easily policed. Or is it?

The figures must be studied minutely, without any prejudice.

It is true that a batch of cases coming from the same source can push our curve sky-high. We have had many such batches – the imported cases from Italy, to begin with; the mass party at the Radisson; the Santa Venera feast; and now the Dar San Guzepp in Fgura. Other countries have had similar batches but they get lost in a big country.

There may be some ideas and suggestions that maybe could help the community face up to the wave of infections before it drowns us.

There is, in general, a lack of significant information. With rare exceptions we do not get to know the localities involved. This may be so as to avoid panic but the obverse of this could be that a neighbour of yours gets infected and, given the secrecy and omerta in such cases, you do not get told.

Also, we are not usually told if a shop, especially one handling food items had been closed for fumigation. Nor a government office.

Other countries have taken stricter steps even though some might think them overly intrusive. They have a specific phone number where one can report, even anonymously, cases of suspected infections. We do have our contact tracing units and the quarantine checkers (who are said to be getting abuse and worse) but there are sections of the population with unsettled residencies which make contact tracing virtually impossible.

The law could conceivably be made harsher and punish those who are infected and do not get registered or those who harbour infected persons.

I visited the Dar San Guzepp website to try and understand how come such a tidal wave could engulf such a home and all I could find were posts by people thanking the staff and frontliners and anguish by relatives who cannot visit their relatives. But nothing to explain why this spike happened nor why other residences so far escaped it. There must be reasons.

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