Weather warning

It was one of those good days. I had closed for the day, and the sun had just begun to set. So I decided in obedience to science… and to my wife, to do some brisk walking in the Ridge area. Just for some droplets of sweat to convince my muscles they were good for something, before I headed on the long drive home. I was now on the homestretch back to the hospital. It had been a pleasant walk so far.  

I kept on my mask most of the way. Sometimes I felt silly with the mask on, and yards of space around me. Masks can increase the work of breathing, and this becomes more obvious the more one exerts oneself, but they have not been comprehensively shown to reduce oxygen levels in blood significantly in normal circumstances. I did feel, on the home stretch, as if my oxygen level was not where it was supposed to be.  

So when I saw the guy, and the lady who may have been his mother, walking on the other side of the pavement, with two large dogs in tow, I was not exactly at my strongest point in the day. They were both in masks, and it is striking how much the mask takes away. These are good times for anyone who would rather go through the day with zero engagement. I had no idea what their expressions would be. But the son must have noted that the huge dogs would look a bit threatening. He pulled his dog towards him, flashed an apologetic smile over his chin mask, and nodded a greeting. I nodded back. I had a smile on my face, but he would not see it. Nowadays the eye brows have to say a lot. I can imagine the eye brow shaping business is booming. I hope mine said enough to let him know how much I appreciated his small gesture. In the scarcity of human consecutiveness that COVID19 has left us, one has to grasp at whatever communal straws remain.  

And COVID 19 has continued to take more away.  These connections that make us human, the expressions that edge us on. And it can take more away. What we can prevent it from taking, however, is the issue. It can take life away, but it should not. It can take away livelihoods, but it should not. We cannot prevent outbreaks from happening, but we can limit them, so they do not progress to epidemic, and then pandemic, and then endemic. Prevention of this progression is a choice. It is a difficult choice, because it always requires discipline, and consistency and focus, and more.  

And we had some of these virtues when this pandemic started. we were able to keep numbers down. We were able to keep mortalities low. And then maybe we got too complacent. Maybe the initial successes blinded us to the tragedies we saw unfolding in countries with much more resources than we had. Maybe we thought we had too much to lose. Maybe we looked at the success stories of other countries much smaller than ours, and thought that at least we could wing this one. So we decided we were too poor for a full and long lockdown. That we could not have done anything about. Then we decided we were in control enough to start meeting in small numbers, and then to send senior students to school. Then we were too poor to push for mass testing and isolating of positive cases. And then we were religious enough to start worshiping in moderate numbers. And now we are too democratic, to postpone every epidemiologist’s nightmare. The old, the middle aged, and the young, are mixing up in large numbers, in long queues. They are haggling to get a place in the book of voting life.  

They are frustrated with the lack of preparedness of electoral officers. They are hungry because some got to the stations early in the morning on empty stomachs. Some are angry because they can see people in the queue they did not expect to see. Apparatchiks are threatening hell and brimstone on perceived misbehaving opponents. Stressed officers are handwriting names, handling identification documents in the humid heat of Accra outdoors. At the tail end, they are getting up close and personal to eager aspiring voters who have to take off their masks for the camera. And then the lamination, and the handing over of the treasured cards. There are supposed to be lines on the floor. There are supposed to be sanitizers, and Veronica buckets, and single chairs spaced nicely for aspiring voters. Sometimes there are, and sometimes not.  

We are either heading for the perfect OOVID19 storm, or the greatest escape of the century.