DEALING WITH A PANDEMIC THAT REFUSES TO GO AWAY

Everybody was caught flatfooted by the pandemic that descended upon us humans seemingly out of nowhere and spread faster than anyone thought possible.

True, we had a threat called SARS, short for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome almost two decades ago – beginning in 2003 and lasting several years– that caused quite a scare, in Asia particularly. I recall that for a while there were body temperature measuring devices at many airports that we had to pass through before allowed to proceed to the Immigration counters. But the spread of SARS never even came close to the havoc that COVID-19 wreaked in the whole world within a matter of months. Both are actually related, the virus that is currently making life miserable is officially designated SARS-CoV-2.

 The speed with which the pandemic reached all corners of the world was unfathomable that it initially led many people to face the threat with an attitude that can only be described as cavalier. In Indonesia, senior government officials made fun and cracked jokes that the nation’s notoriously unwieldy bureaucracy proved such a deterrent that not only foreign investment, but also foreign viruses stayed away. In a way this self-deprecating humor is sort of funny, but certainly not in retrospect and in the context of a pandemic.

The haphazard public communications matched the initial lethargy in facing up to the lethal threat. To make matters worse, the absence of clarity in the early pronouncements from the World Health Organization at the onset of the pandemic did not help instill a sense of crisis either. Only when hospitals ran out of beds and cemeteries had problems finding sufficient burial spaces did the truth dawn upon us and nonchalance gradually gave way to panic.

The pictures of ambulances and hearses standing in line for their turn to deliver the deceased to their final resting place with no one in attendance apart from funeral workers covered in protective gear from head to toe, drove home the chilling fact that this virus is very, very deadly. When prominent government officials and private sector executives succumbed to the pandemic it became evident that the virus respects no one. All the banter stopped. Only then did we realize this was no joking matter, but this awareness did not serve as an impetus to improve public information either.

To this date, reliable statistics of COVID-19 related deaths remain elusive. Some NGOs took it upon themselves to collect data straight from cemeteries and hospitals around the country, but after a while, they either gave up or were told not to persist in the futile exercise. At this point, no one seems to care because we have been in the dark for far too long. We only can take comfort from anecdotal evidence indicating that for whatever reason the situation is serious but apparently not as dire as in other countries with huge populations. We can only pray that this assumption is correct.

The only countries in the world that seemed to get it right from the beginning were Singapore and New Zealand. Geography and demographics of course helped. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand in particular, rightfully earned a lot of praise worldwide for the way she handled the deadly threat of the pandemic, including how she made strategic public communication an integral part of the measures to overcome the pandemic.

New Zealand punches far above its weight, Indonesia is the exact opposite. Some people are not even aware that Indonesia is a country, quite a large one at that. To some extent, we have no one to blame but ourselves as we are not known for letting our voice be heard. I do not intend in any way to denigrate or disparage the achievements of PM Ardern and the valiant Kiwis who successfully kept their country safe amid the ubiquitous life-threatening situation. Nonetheless, a few items need to be kept in mind to put things in perspective. In addition to the high standard of education and welfare of New Zealand that facilitates the understanding of the situation among the populace, in most cases it is a final destination for travelers. Indonesia is at the crossroads of many routes and as such more susceptible to external threats of all kinds.

Anyone looking at the globe will notice a string of islands straddling the equator between mainland Asia and the continent of Australia, although maybe not everybody is aware that they make up a single country, Indonesia. The Dutch adored the tropical beauty of these islands so much that they called them collectively “gordel van smaragd” or belt of emeralds in English. (As an aside, countless nostalgic songs and books have been written by the Dutch about the lost emeralds after Indonesia declared independence in 1945 following capitulation of the Japanese occupying forces to the Allies).

 It is said that as the largest archipelago, Indonesia comprises 17,000 islands. No one knows for sure – we are still counting. The aggregate of all these islands makes up a landmass about the size of Mexico – or the combined area of France, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Sweden. Among these, five large islands stand out, the smallest of them is the Island of Java. That does not say much to those who have never lived in Indonesia. Java is slightly larger than the North Island and slightly smaller than the South Island of New Zealand, so in terms of size, it is in between the two. Here is where the comparison ends. The population of New Zealand is 4.8 million, less than half the population of Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta. For Europeans it is perhaps easier to compare the size of Java to that of Greece, they are about similar. Americans may relate to Mississippi that is a tad smaller than Java.

The country has a total population of 275 million, out of which more than half, about 150 million live on Java. So, let us imagine 150 million people living in Greece, Mississippi, or the South Island of New Zealand for that matter. The distance from the westernmost tip of Indonesia to its eastern equivalent is 5,200 km, almost the distance from Anchorage in Alaska to Monterrey in Mexico. From the European perspective, this covers the distance from Reykjavik in Iceland to Baku in Azerbaijan.

The lack of clear public communication and less than optimal health measures notwithstanding, we are doing relatively well under the pandemic, which is nothing short of a miracle. Let us hope it holds. A little over a year has passed since we first heard of the deadly disease caused by the COVID-19 virus. This is a good time to take stock of the situation and reflect on what to do next, including dealing with communication aspects.

Communicating across the largest archipelago in the world that is home to hundreds of millions of people made up of hundreds of different ethnic groups that have their own respective language in a developing economy has not been, and will never be, easy. The government would be well advised to listen to stakeholders in improving public communication strategy in the face of the pandemic that is likely to be around for a while. So far, the impression that is created is of a government that thinks it has or must have all the answers to everything under the sun, the stakeholders be damned.

The measures to get the pandemic under control have improved tremendously in the last few months. From my own experience, I am impressed by the efficiency of the vaccination process. Two days after the second jab I received a WhatsApp message containing the details of my vaccination and an impressive QR-code. That is in addition to the certificate issued on the spot, right after the vaccination, that lists the batch numbers of the two jabs I received, date and hour of the interventions, and the name and mobile phone number of the attending physician just in case anything untoward happens.

In short, the whole process was reassuring. But we are not out of the woods yet. The communication aspects need to keep up with the progress of the mass vaccination itself. An information deficit may lead to complacency or relapses and both will keep the deadly virus longer in our midst.