Life imititates art especially when you are into arts a lot. The last two years have been a pilot episode of the world’s largest Hades Factor and 4.11million people have joined Hades, Uganda having 395 people of the statistics. I have used Facebook as a benchmark because it is my journal entry and this is more like a screenshot edition.
One of my best reads of 2015 ,was Hades Factor by Robert Ludlum and Gayle Lynds Ludlum is famous for The Bourne Trilogy. In Hades Factor, he teamed up with former journalist, Gayle Lynds to give us the epic novel. Sophia Russell, a research scientist is working to understand the disease. She later succumbs to the disease.Bitter and broken-hearted over her death, Lt. Colonel Jon Smith is determined to uncover the cause of the virus that killed her—and prevent it from turning into a pandemic of epic proportions. This book came to my mind when the WHO announced that covid-19 was a pandemic.
As reports started coming in that the virus was getting viral, I knew that we were cooked. My speculative theory is that there was a study of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome(SARS) in the Wuhan Laboratory and things got out of hand. The theory of the marinated rats from the wet market doesn’t cut it for me. The Pangolins perhaps, those weird looking things could have had a lot to do with Rona.
My concern was whether our limping health system could hold up to the pandemic. The first positive case was on the 14th March, on the 18th, all schools were closed for what would be the longest time that learners would be at home. There were 15 million learners and the head of state usually called the learners abazzukulu( grandchildren) and therefore could not afford to let them die on his watch.
The first lockdown was announced and it seemed like it was for just 18 days but the Leopard had other plans. In commentary, the President of Uganda is referred to as the ‘Leopard/Leopold ‘, this stems from 2016 Presidential elections.The Presidential Address on the television stations became the order of the night as television stations were required to interrupt regular programming to show the Presidential address . To his credit,the President educated the nationals about the disease,how it is spread and how it can be avoided. Words like Okwetsyamura,(sneezing) orwoya(air molecules) okuturiza (spreading) would not miss in his speech.There were various awareness songs by some musicians in a bid to spread the message. The President quoted a Scripture to back up the lockdown. Isaiah 26:20,”go home my people and shut the doors wait until his wrath has passed”. Total lockdown for people meant that there was no movement,public transport was suspended and special passes were made for the Essential workers. The Local Defense Unit became the enforcement agency. I was against the idea of a total lockdown from an economic point of view and indeed,right I was because some SME’s are yet to recover.
This pandemic exposed us,fake news made rounds and people started believing that 5g network masts had something to do with the virus. My mind went to a book, The Psychology of Pandemics. This applied to most parts of the world. I knew about the sanitizer but not as urgently as the experts emphasized it. Suddenly we normalized and loved the masks. We began washing hands to avoid the virus.
The year 2020 ran fast and before we knew it,we were in December. The year began and the second wave was on its way aided by the people of course who had forgotten about the Standard Operating Procedures. Cases spiked and Leopard locked us down again and the hospitals began overcharging patients,there was a shortage of Oxygen cylinders and we really looked helpless.
As I had previously written, the only way out is vaccination and there were issues with vaccine equity especially by the African countries. Currently Uganda is trying to amend the law to fine antivaxxers, the fact of the matter is that the unvaccinated will be isolated as Novac Djokovic recently was. Covid-19 is part of us and is going nowhere, I think whereas we have not achieved herd immunity, vaccination is going to help us. This I can say has been the last two years.
Mwene 