The Malta Independent 25 April 2024, Thursday
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A perfect storm

Noel Grima Sunday, 27 September 2020, 08:40 Last update: about 5 years ago

All it lacks is the metrological dimension and, since I am writing this on Friday early afternoon, there are predictions of a storm from now to Sunday but nothing more than that so far.

Otherwise the situation is getting grimmer and darker by the day.

Our attention remains focused on the resurgence of the pandemic in our midst with the death just announced of a 90-year old man.

Malta has now risen to the third infectious country in Europe when just a few weeks ago it was Europe's best.

Many of the details of the sick and the dead remain hidden from us ordinary citizens but they would be known to the authorities. We are trusted with crumbs of information and so rumours proliferate.

Nevertheless, we have come to know about the very dire situation at Dar San Guzepp in Fgura where not only the number of infected persons now runs into three figures but also a high number of carers and staff are in quarantine thus reducing the number of staff to cope with the increasing load.

One would have expected the State to come in and help, this being a private sector, and indeed some help has been given. We must note that the State-run homes like the big St Vincent Dr Paule and other big homes have thankfully avoided this trauma. So what happened at Dar San Guzepp?

There are others battling Covid, Prof Gauci just said, so we must prepare for more deaths.

This situation is having an impact across the country and Minister Fearne hinted at stricter rules coming in. I think it would be useless to add more rules when the ones we already have are broken in public all the time.

There are a couple of videos of walking tours of Jerusalem taken just a week or so ago and you do not see one person without a mask even in that heat.

The truth is there is no enforcement here and the spread of the virus shows it.

People have been showing scenes of people massed together – entering the Law Courts, packed buses during the rush hour – and the authorities, though they know all this, do not take steps to address them.

I keep repeating : Malta is a small island and should be easily governed. But if people get the nod that all is permitted and condoned, all the rules, protocols and declarations fly out of the window. And people get infected.

It is useless and quite insulting to keep repeating that the deceased had a medical condition (whole doesn’t, at that age?) when the simple truth is these persons would have still be alive were it not for the pandemic and the infection.

What was introduced at the start of the pandemic in March\April amid the gloom and doom of those days has been mostly forgotten as people shook free of the restrictions – distancing, use of temperature checks and sanitisers.

There is no sense of urgency or danger. This is happening all over Europe and in fact the infections are increasing. But the governments, except so far ours, are at least responding with targeted lockdowns.

We prided ourselves with reopening they airport, and that was something that needed to be done. But then the greedy took over and our boat sank.

As I said earlier, people will react by inventing rumours in the absence of clear stated facts.  When clubs and kazini remain closed, there must be a reason (such as being a hot-spot of the infection) but unless policing is beefed up, only the rumours ratchet up.

The third dimension of this perfect storm is the election of the new PN leader.

Do not be taken in by this apparent calm and peace. Beneath the surface there are raging storms. We all remember what took place when Adrian Delia was elected after the general election and the manifold spin by the Labour party in his favour.

Things have now changed and the Labour spin is now against Bernard Grech even before he is chosen, promising hard battles ahead.

This leads me to the fourth dimension – the news coming from the Law Courts with arrests, people arrested and set free, assets frozen, formerly immune persons now under threat, etc.

As someone remarked, this is all the panic the upcoming Moneyval scrutiny is causing. When key people from huge company Siemens are coming you get the feeling the proverbial is hitting the fan.

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