Edwinology’s Lab : 21 reasons why I support removal of lockdown restrictions
In my considered view, the lifting of lockdown restrictions is a good decision.
To find out why the restrictions have been lifted, we need to understand why it was put in place.
1. It was not because Ghana had recorded a case. That is a half-truth. It was because Ghana needed to understand the spread, and get a grip on where it spreads, and how it spreads it. It’s called mapping.
2. Has the government done that? It’s reasonable to say it has. We have tested over 57,000 contacts, the second-highest in Africa.
3. Algeria has over 2,500 infections. Do you know how many people they have tested? An incredulous 3,000. Let me not even come to Nigeria, Africa’s unofficially failed stated.
4. So the government meant as far as objective one and two of the strategy are concerned, have gotten a hold of the virus. We are ahead of it. We are not clutching straws like Ecuador with bodies lined up in the streets and a 100 workers resigning.
5. So what the government has done is like a house master suspecting some students have fled home without proper permission. So what does he do? He issues a roll call to find out those who escaped campus without exeat or abist.
6. During a roll call, you stand by your bed( restricted movement stay at home style). Now that we know 34 students have abandoned post, do we keep everyone standing by their beds before they return to campus? No.
7. That’s exactly what the government has done.
8. In one month since coronavirus entered Europe, mass graves have been dug and bodies are kept in wardrobes and chairs.
9. With one month of coronavirus in Ghana, only two patients have been put on a ventilator. Majority of the infected are mildly ill and the recoveries have been growing by leaps and bounds.
10. This virus, therefore, did not hurt us as much as it hurt our economy.
11. Removing the restrictions sounds a cautiously responsible thing to do.And we have to give the president the benefit of the doubt.
12. In Europe, one month after infections, the countries health sectors – Italy, Spain, UK- have crippled devastatingly, bodies lie outside in the open in the US.
13. But even epicentres in Europe, Germany, is expected to open school; Italy has opened shops; Spain is set to do the same. Their death rate is tens of thousands.
14. But the people with nine deaths, about 1.9% of the total infections, want to still stay at home.
12. Presidents all over the world are in a difficult place. In our case, he has to make decisions considering health, educations, economy, politics, life, death and a crushingly difficult lock-down.
13. This decision making is not as simple as choosing to fire the PPA boss A.B Adjei, who formed his own company to award government contracts to the highest bidder.
14. But he has decided, and has given directives on social distancing and mask- wearing in public.
15. We need to follow these directives still giving the government the benefit of the doubt.
16. These are not normal times and our politics need to show we rally around the president and demand accountability in peace times.
17. In World War I and II, the nations rallied around and opposition politics sort to look for guns to join the fight, than to look for press conferences to bash.
18. Let’s tone down and wait for the day of accountability. Because it will surely come.
19. We are not in normal times, our politics must reflect this.
20. As for the NDC response as I have read, I’m lost for words. But clearly, strategy is not their strongest point. More on that later.
21. So wear your mask like a rifle in war times. Staying home is good, but with a few exceptions, doing so is cowardice and I know something about cowards, they die ten times before their death.
Bullshit! The face mask cannot protect you. Plus don’t compare Ghana to a country with good infrastructure and over 200 million population.
You’ve said very great things and we hope we have control over the virus. Truly, the lockdown has consequences that can lead and lead to the same deaths we are trying to avoid, so it makes sense to devise ways and means to maneuver round the disease at state and ease these other deadly tensions that have built up. Playing politics with this make no sense to me. If in the next five minutes we realize we have to lockdown again, we will have to do it not blinking an eye.
On the flip side, it is very obvious that there are good ways we can handle total lockdown and get rid of this menace. The problem is we are not uniting even in the face of death to unilaterally deal with this demon roaming our lands. We have to stop the quick misinterpretation of government directives and ask tangible questions for clarification. We have to make reasonable suggestions to the state and the government is supposed to listen to us irrespective of our political divides.
We have a common enemy, DEATH, hunting us down, torturing us and letting some go for now and taken some along with him. Let us all DROP our divides, unite behind our current leaders and defeat DEATH. Trust me, this is what GOD, ALLAH, YAWEH, KRISHNA, BUDDHA, no matter you faith and religion, wants from us NOW.
21 reasons really đ
Your SHE analogy was silly to say the least and points like 14 just gave you away. Smh I blame myself for reading this.
A complete waste of my time, I will never get back.
SHS*
You literally played your political card. Now I feel you are also employed by another politician to use your office to spread calmness after a rash decision has been made.
Your submissions have given a good exposition on the difference between our social/structural systems and those of the “developed” world. The epidemiology of COVID 19 has been contextualised. I would like to add the aspect of the rural agrarian community which serves as the food basket and the backbone to the economy of Ghana. My heart jumped whenever I heard of a nationwide lockdown with my mind set on the rural communities I know. What would have been the implication of a lock-down if it were extended nationwide?
1. For the people of Adiembra in the Afram Plains, a lockdown means abstaining from the farms. Staying home would have meant a worsening of the social distancing issue. People would congregate under the “kwankwandua ase” to play oware, dame, ampe. etc. Not going to the farm would mean crisscrossing the community to say hello to the “abusuapanyin”, a sibling or an in-law.
2. Lockdown at Nsowakrom in the Western North Region would have led to poor a cocoa harvest. How would we service the billions of dollars Ghana has contracted as loans? How were you going to earn the US dollars Ghana Cocoa Board rakes in on the back of the âserviceâ the cocoa farmer at Nsowakrom renders to the nation? The implication on foreign exchange would have stayed with us for a very long time!
3. For the hard-working people of Torkor in the Volta Region, a lockdown would have very little meaning. The absence of fishing activity in the fishing communities along the âalmightyâ Volta would have created huge malnutrition for the country. Where were we going to have the needed hard currency to import the âfrozenâ fish and supply them to the agrarian communities in Ghana?
4. A lockdown to the equally hardworking people of Jirandongo in the Kpandai District at the onset of the rainy season would have been disastrous. This is the time for the clearing of the farmlands for yam cultivation as they await the rains. It is time to clear the land and prepare the mounds and wait for the early rains to arrive so that the planting of yams can proceed. The few âluckyâ yam seeds that have been planted are anxiously waiting for rains to sprout.
5. Lockdown at Ampoma in Bono East would mean not attending to the farm for 2 or more weeks. This will obviously lead to weeds taking over the crops in the farm. What would be the harvest at the end of this farming season? We would have witnessed a real form of hunger by the end of this year, worse than that of 1983. I recall how we could harvest in the morning, peel it, pound it raw it, dry it for some time, mill and prepare kokonte all in one day. I mean within one day, cassava was uprooted, dried and used to prepare supper. How were we going to queue for yellow corn? And yellow corn from where, by the way?
6. How many policemen would be at Mframa in Sene West to enforce the law on restrictions? One police post with about 5 men would have had to enforce the law in about not less than 5 small communities! People would defy the orders. We dread of even dawn-to-dusk curfews, let alone 24/7 lockdown.
7. In any case, how were we going to share food to my people in Adiembra, Nsowakrom, Torkor, Ampoma, Jirandongo or Mframa? Ns3m piii. That also leads to several questions I asked myself. In what way would we distribute food, and in what form? In take-aways or in raw form? Take-away is not possible, and raw food distributed comes with going to the fetch firewood and water, an essential service to violet restriction. What distribution system can handle the situation? Our social dynamics also pose some challenges. How we queue for things in schools, at parties, etc ?
We pray that we all heed to the various campaigns on hand-washing, the use of nose masks and hand-sanitisers, and the observance of social distancing to help us avoid the near occasion of locking down rural communities Pina in Upper West. A lot depends on you and me. The lockdown at micro-level (isolating a community locking down) may be inevitable if the situation requires that. A lockdown at the macro situation is unfathomably dreadful, and I canât think farrrrrr! The question has always been that of a trade-off between economics and health safety. We have to always strike a balance between the two arguments on the continuum. At one time we may lockdown to save lives. In Ghana, the health argument afforded us the opportunity to study data in order to understand the behaviour of the coronavirus, its incidence, and prevalence. So, as no-size-fits-all measure, we could be swinging along the continuum at different times as the situation changes. But for now, and I believe in months ahead, as far as our agrarian rural economy (rural community) is concerned, the economic arguments still surpass those of health.
These were the few words of the Wiase-Bantama-Kwame/Danso-Prang-Atebubu Adam Smith.
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Are these 21 reasons? They read more of a comment and observations than reasons. Come again brother.