COVID-19 PANDEMIC IS STILL VERY REAL

Sir,

Following last week’s news that the world’s most powerful person, US President Joe Biden, had tested COVID-19 positive, I for one would be inclined to take any relaxation of COVID-19 regulations with a pinch of salt. According to the White House, the president was fully vaccinated and twice boosted, and experiencing very mild symptoms. What does that mean for the world? Firstly, the most powerful person is just as human as everyone else.

Responsibility

US President Joe Biden is a senior and thus more susceptible to both COVID-19 and the consequences of it, including the risk of death and long-term COVID-19. Presidents need to be physically healthy given the workload and responsibility, and also mentally and morally healthy, something some recent presidents have not always seemed to be. We all wish him a swift and complete recovery. Early efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic were undermined by those promoting dangerous misinformation about unfounded therapies, attacking the credibility of public health experts, and undermining trust in medical science and the nature of evidence.  Leading doctors, scientists, and public health experts had to sign a statement to affirm the importance of the scientific process to counteract deadly misinformation.

Secondly, scientific evidence must continue to be the fundamental force driving progress in medical care, especially during a pandemic. COVID-19 is still real, and the world needs to continue working on eradicating it everywhere. The same applies to a number of other diseases such as monkepox, and others which have always existed and yet solutions are still a long way off. The world needs to be fixed, and it is not just the medical problems.
Closer to home, while the mandatory regulation on masks has recently been eased, over the past three days, there have been reports of at least three new cases per day and the the Ministry of Health keeps reminding the nation of the three principal ways of fighting COVID-19; to wash hands with soap and running water, keeping a social distance of at least one to two metres from another person and to use a mask where necessary. Therefore, I will keep my mask on, especially in crowded areas such as church.

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