Lockdown Three, no matter how unpleasant it's going to be, will rule our lives for some time to come. It's better late than never. Despite much second-guessing over the past 15 months, the Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin has finally put his foot down as it's a matter of life and death.
The PM has done the right thing as what mentoring coach David Cottrel said: "Doing the right thing isn't always easy. In fact, sometimes it's real hard. But, just remember that doing the right thing is always right."
The coronavirus is no respecter of age, gender, status or rank as people in their 20s or even kids had been affected. Despite countless reminders, the laxity of standard operating procedure adherence is indeed shocking. Flouters include those in positions of power, celebrities and of course, ordinary folk.
When we read about Intensive Care Units (ICU) being overwhelmed, makeshift morgues in refrigerated containers and people dying in rapid fashion outside the country, we never thought it would happen here. Then we let our guard down.
We've to deploy what the Emergency is supposed to do. Ramping up vaccination after some sputtering delays since February this year is chief among the agenda. When it's a matter of life and death, our usual local mantra of "Oh, we do things our own way" has to go out the window.
Another matter which the government ought to look into is what should survivors do after they've been discharged.
Take the case of Joseph Ong, my 62-year-old widower cousin. He spent close to RM9,000 to stay in a nursing home in Klang for almost three months after he was discharged from the Sungai Buloh Hospital because he wanted to make sure he had the right care and medication.
In reality, not all can be like Ong as one Abdul Rahman Abdullah revealed. He related a story on social media as told by a family member, who is a doctor in a Covid-19 ICU, where the exhausted frontliner disclosed that there were patients who had been discharged, but only to come back after two months to die!
"For every bed vacated, five patients are waiting. It just seems never-ending," the doctor lamented. Rahman said the doctor disclosed that medical personnel had even taken their own initiative to check on the wellbeing of their discharged patients themselves.
The doctor cited an example of an elderly patient who was about to be discharged from the hospital, but the two persons whom she was living with were also Covid-19 positive and therefore had to be in hospital.
"So, this elderly patient was going home to nobody. When the medical personnel called for a check, they found out she came home to an empty larder, with no money and no one to take care of her," he wrote, adding that the presumption that extended families may help cannot hold water as people were now restricted on inter-district and interstate travel. As such, help was arranged.
As he fast-tracked the story, Rahman was subsequently asked to help out as the mother had to go into ICU while her daughter and son-in-law, who were also Covid-19 positive, had to be quarantined at home.
This was very telling as he wrote: "The daughter is quarantined in the living room so she can cook and manage the house, while her husband and children stay quarantined in a room. While the daughter makes and sells kuih, her husband is a Grab driver. But, since both are quarantined, they do not have an income. To make matters worse, he does not own the car used for the Grab gig and has to pay daily rental even if he doesn't use it."
To cut the long story short, a Buddhist monk donated cash while United Sikhs and Kembara Kitchen sent food, diapers and even loaned an Oximeter to check oxygen levels.
This was most poignant from Rahman: "The wonderful thing about our multi-ethnic country is that people from all religious groups and ethnicities came to help. They helped without needing to know the race or religion of the family, or the kind doctor who took the trouble to find help for the family members while taking care of the elderly mother in the ICU."
No more pussy-footing, we're at war now!
The writer is a former chief executive officer and editor-in-chief of Bernama