Laraib Nisar
The third wave of covid-19 has struck Pakistan really hard. The number of infections per day are constantly surging in the third wave, as the new British variant of the virus is quite resilient and far more lethal and contagious than the previous variants of the coronavirus. Our next door neighbor India has seen a huge catastrophe for not taking the third wave of coronavirus seriously, and if we don’t learn a lesson from them, we might have to face even worse consequences in the near future. While the official figure of reported positive cases in the last 24 hours is 4,298, Pakistan needs to expedite its measures to tackle the critical health emergency it is facing.
Pakistan has a good track record of tackling the grave issue in the earlier phases, and has earned international praise for performing the task effectively but now the circumstances seem to have changed prominently. The first issue posed to the government is the attitude, behavior and mindset of the general public. People have developed a fairly casual attitude towards the pandemic and ignore the precautionary measures and guidelines provided by the government and health experts. With the Islamic festival of Eid-ul-Fitr around the corner, people are busy shopping without following the basic SOPs, hence the positivity rate is on a surge. The government’s decision of restricting the operation timings of markets and economic centers has led to an increased swarming of public in the selected time period, moreover, despite the restricted timings many local shopkeepers tend to operate covertly even in the prohibited time frame hence making the whole practice of time-wise lockdown obsolete.
Additionally, the restrictions created a fear of an anticipated lockdown in the public and hence people started hoarding basic commodities which resulted not only in a shortage of some of the essential goods but also increased crowds at government and private grocery stores, with people not caring about the graveness of circumstances that the world is facing during the global pandemic. The general public has developed a narrative that though COVID is present, but it is not lethal enough to kill, and the Muslim belief that one can’t adjourn and delay death further adds fuel to the fire of this false and dangerous public perception of the global pandemic.
This mindset is also a big impediment in the effective running of the nation-wide vaccination program launched by the government. Since the time Pakistan got its hand on the COVID vaccine, absurd conspiracy theories have started floating in the country like the vaccine is lethal, causes sterility and infertility in people and hence is a tool by the government to control the ticking bomb of unmanageable population growth, the vaccine is a move by the west to insert a chip in our bodies to steal our million dollars data and ideas *no pun intended*. Such theories impact the psyche of the public and develop a defiant attitude in them regarding getting immunized. Though a lot of people did register themselves and got vaccinated, still loopholes persist especially in the middle and lower-middle economic segments of the society.
It is high time that policy makers understand that the fight against COVID has become a war against perceptions and stereotypes, and hence the best way to tackle is to raise awareness in the population about the graveness of the situation, and the anticipated outcomes if the same attitudes are carried on. This can be done by showing the case studies from countries which are facing the consequences of negligence e.g. India, along with messages from health experts defying the conspiracy theories associated with the COVID vaccine. The religious scholars also have a role to play in enlightening the public that although Islam believes that death in an inevitable reality but Islam also imparts that life is a precious gift from the Almighty and taking care of the health and life by following SOPs is a responsibility. It is imperative to make the general public understand that ignorance is not a bliss, it is indeed the kiss of death in the current circumstances.
The author Laraib Nisar is a Defense and Strategic Studies’ graduate, working as a Research Associate at the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) Islamabad.
