The extension of travel restrictions on 14 June was due to the fact that the data had been doctored, said the President at a recent press conference. No pun intended.
Apparently, the doctors in charge of Covid data collation had fudged the data with regard to Covid fatalities. They had repeated some statistics, and this was discovered when State intelligence was deployed to examine details about these deaths.
That the details were fudged was bad enough. Those responsible must be held to account. But this article would focus on the repercussions. The country was locked down for an additional week based on these details.
It has been known for several weeks – months even – that the data being released was taking into account previous deaths that occurred as a result of various comorbidities. That is to say that these deaths were of people dying of some other cause such as heart failure or kidney failure with the deaths eventually being put down to Covid later, because a PCR test would indicate that the deceased person was stricken with Covid.
This entire process seems so questionable. People die of other causes and their deaths are put down to Covid, several months later, on account of the fact that there were some PCR tests that showed signs of Covid?
The problem is when an entire country is shut down based on such questionable data – and based on such questionable practices. The cost to the economy is incalculable. It was not as if the country was financially viable before the recent lockdowns.
But yet, there was a fresh bout of lockdowns, culminating in the post-14 June lockdown that we are told was based upon erroneous data. How could a country endure weeks-long lockdowns of this nature based upon questionable medical reporting?
Perhaps countries such as Australia could do it – those are nations that have the means and could in a manner of speaking “lockdown for fun”. Not so a country such as ours which is financially in more than a spot of bother, particularly due to the lockdowns of 2020.
This is not a country in which people who suffer economic loss due to a lockdown can be paid a dole or paid any form of reasonable compensation for the loss of income due to the so-called travel restrictions. It’s not Australia or the US or the UK.
The upshot of the now clear evidence that there was a fudging of data is that people suffered economic loss due to no reason. The focus is on one week. That’s the week from the 14th to the 21st. But what of the weeks before that? These weeks too were a case of lockdowns due to at least partially fudged data, or at least fudged medical practices.
There is no credibility when people who die of other diseases are months later slotted as Covid fatalities and added to a death toll on a given day. That cannot be reasonable medical practice. If a person died of Covid-related pneumonia per se, that fact should have been painfully obvious. The death would have been immediately registered as a Covid-related fatality, not months later.
These facts should have been cottoned onto by the powers that be, much before the President made a revelation two days back saying he suspected fudged data and had confirmed this fact by deploying State intelligence.
This writer would daresay that there is no learning curve when it comes to running a country. No doubt the Government has been dealt a very difficult hand. This entire Covid crisis isn’t one that anyone saw coming. It’s true that leaderships are damned if they do and damned if they don’t with regard to the Covid prevention policy.
But even so, how does that possibly excuse the country being locked down basically for more than a month based on fudged data and questionable practices? People’s livelihoods are not a joke.
The national economy is not a joke. According to the State Minister of Finance, the current phase of the lockdown cost the country some Rs. 100 billion in losses. These numbers translate as lost opportunities, lost jobs, and lost livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of people.
All that cannot be put down to a learning curve, i.e that the administration had to learn the hard way that the figures of Covid deaths were questionable. Also, the stress is on the deaths. The people are far more concerned about statistics dealing with deaths than they are with the numbers of those diagnosed as having the disease.
State intelligence was at the disposal of the powers that be from the very start of the second phase of the lockdown, and even before that. There is a very efficient or purportedly efficient military-led apparatus that’s supposed to be on top of some of these issues. Military-led, in the sense that the men at the top are ex-military folk, such as Shavendra Silva, for instance.
This apparatus should have known that the lockdowns contemplated were unnecessary if the numbers were being fudged in the first place. In other words, they should have been able to prevent the economically disruptive lockdowns which were called travel restrictions by way of euphemism, before they happened.
The opening up of the country on the 21st this week comes far too late, and does far too little to redress the economic damage sustained by these intermittent lockdowns, which now follow a pattern after the first phase of lockdowns in March or so of 2020.
The Government ought to know when it is being set up for failure by the medical community. Not all of the medical community, but certain sections of it. Dr. Padeniya, a GMOA (Government Medical Officers’ Association) heavyweight, for instance, is seen telling the President that there is a conspiracy “behind the fudged figures”. Now, that’s a physician, not a columnist in a newspaper, telling the country’s President that there is something wrong with the way these lockdowns began, based on fudged data.
This whole slew of circumstances could very well be seen in a different light, say years from now, when all this Covid hysteria had died down. Even though it would be readily acknowledged by anyone that the Government had a tough call and a bad hand whichever way you cut it, it’s still a government. It’s not a bunch of show ponies getting ready to keep a class of kindergarten kids amused.
These crippling lockdowns – the last phase in particular causing Rs. 100 billion in damage to add to all our current woes – should not have come just because (a) there was Covid hysteria in the country, and (b) just because sections of the medical community were asking for lockdowns. The fact is that they still do, even after the country was opened up after weeks of a crippling shutdown.
That’s no way to run a country – to be led by hysterical people and a shrill doctor community that are flagrantly fudging the numbers. These are people’s lives that we are talking about. Rs. 100 billion in economic damage means that people’s lives would be visited with much more misery than they already endure.
That’s all justified because there are people dying of Covid? It’s true some infected folk are dying of Covid. It could be anybody, you or me, if we are unlucky. But there are people dying of other causes too and the significant fact is that the deaths due to Covid are about as bad as deaths due to dengue, and no more.
There were hundreds of recorded dengue deaths in Sri Lanka due to the dengue pandemic. Yes, dengue was officially designated a pandemic too. The hundreds of dengue deaths in 2017 didn’t cause a blip on the radar, leave alone closures, or even isolation. Of course, dengue is not transmitted from human to human, it’s transmitted by mosquitoes. There should have still been a case for isolation of areas because theoretically, the misquotes from those given areas and their ability to carry the disease from human to human should have been curtailed.
No such thing was done. Why? Because nobody gave a toss about dengue deaths. Dengue was a scourge in tiny Third World countries such as ours. Coronavirus is the big ticket.
No, they rightly didn’t lock down for dengue because that would have been folly of the first order. These recent lockdowns in dire economic circumstances was folly of the first order. The deaths due to Covid here in this country are so far relatively insignificant too: Less than 1% of the entire population. That’s a fact. The medical community is entitled to its own opinions, not to its own facts.
The Government, which boasts of a highly sophisticated military intelligence network, was basically duped into more or less destroying the economy, and with it, people’s lives, one more time this last month. Sorry, but they have to claim ownership for that unconscionable loss, and if the economy doesn’t recover, be so contrite as to acknowledge liability and perhaps face the consequences.
(The writer is a former Editor-in-Chief of three national English language publications and a practising Attorney-at-Law. He is an Editors’ Guild award-winning columnist, and contributing writer and columnist for Nikkei Asian Review and South China Morning Post, while his editorials have been published in The Australian)Who will pay for this unnecessary lockdown damage?
21 Jun 2021
Who will pay for this unnecessary lockdown damage?
21 Jun 2021
The extension of travel restrictions on 14 June was due to the fact that the data had been doctored, said the President at a recent press conference. No pun intended.
Apparently, the doctors in charge of Covid data collation had fudged the data with regard to Covid fatalities. They had repeated some statistics, and this was discovered when State intelligence was deployed to examine details about these deaths.
That the details were fudged was bad enough. Those responsible must be held to account. But this article would focus on the repercussions. The country was locked down for an additional week based on these details.
It has been known for several weeks – months even – that the data being released was taking into account previous deaths that occurred as a result of various comorbidities. That is to say that these deaths were of people dying of some other cause such as heart failure or kidney failure with the deaths eventually being put down to Covid later, because a PCR test would indicate that the deceased person was stricken with Covid.
This entire process seems so questionable. People die of other causes and their deaths are put down to Covid, several months later, on account of the fact that there were some PCR tests that showed signs of Covid?
The problem is when an entire country is shut down based on such questionable data – and based on such questionable practices. The cost to the economy is incalculable. It was not as if the country was financially viable before the recent lockdowns.
But yet, there was a fresh bout of lockdowns, culminating in the post-14 June lockdown that we are told was based upon erroneous data. How could a country endure weeks-long lockdowns of this nature based upon questionable medical reporting?
Perhaps countries such as Australia could do it – those are nations that have the means and could in a manner of speaking “lockdown for fun”. Not so a country such as ours which is financially in more than a spot of bother, particularly due to the lockdowns of 2020.
This is not a country in which people who suffer economic loss due to a lockdown can be paid a dole or paid any form of reasonable compensation for the loss of income due to the so-called travel restrictions. It’s not Australia or the US or the UK.
The upshot of the now clear evidence that there was a fudging of data is that people suffered economic loss due to no reason. The focus is on one week. That’s the week from the 14th to the 21st. But what of the weeks before that? These weeks too were a case of lockdowns due to at least partially fudged data, or at least fudged medical practices.
There is no credibility when people who die of other diseases are months later slotted as Covid fatalities and added to a death toll on a given day. That cannot be reasonable medical practice. If a person died of Covid-related pneumonia per se, that fact should have been painfully obvious. The death would have been immediately registered as a Covid-related fatality, not months later.
These facts should have been cottoned onto by the powers that be, much before the President made a revelation two days back saying he suspected fudged data and had confirmed this fact by deploying State intelligence.
This writer would daresay that there is no learning curve when it comes to running a country. No doubt the Government has been dealt a very difficult hand. This entire Covid crisis isn’t one that anyone saw coming. It’s true that leaderships are damned if they do and damned if they don’t with regard to the Covid prevention policy.
But even so, how does that possibly excuse the country being locked down basically for more than a month based on fudged data and questionable practices? People’s livelihoods are not a joke.
The national economy is not a joke. According to the State Minister of Finance, the current phase of the lockdown cost the country some Rs. 100 billion in losses. These numbers translate as lost opportunities, lost jobs, and lost livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of people.
All that cannot be put down to a learning curve, i.e that the administration had to learn the hard way that the figures of Covid deaths were questionable. Also, the stress is on the deaths. The people are far more concerned about statistics dealing with deaths than they are with the numbers of those diagnosed as having the disease.
State intelligence was at the disposal of the powers that be from the very start of the second phase of the lockdown, and even before that. There is a very efficient or purportedly efficient military-led apparatus that’s supposed to be on top of some of these issues. Military-led, in the sense that the men at the top are ex-military folk, such as Shavendra Silva, for instance.
This apparatus should have known that the lockdowns contemplated were unnecessary if the numbers were being fudged in the first place. In other words, they should have been able to prevent the economically disruptive lockdowns which were called travel restrictions by way of euphemism, before they happened.
The opening up of the country on the 21st this week comes far too late, and does far too little to redress the economic damage sustained by these intermittent lockdowns, which now follow a pattern after the first phase of lockdowns in March or so of 2020.
The Government ought to know when it is being set up for failure by the medical community. Not all of the medical community, but certain sections of it. Dr. Padeniya, a GMOA (Government Medical Officers’ Association) heavyweight, for instance, is seen telling the President that there is a conspiracy “behind the fudged figures”. Now, that’s a physician, not a columnist in a newspaper, telling the country’s President that there is something wrong with the way these lockdowns began, based on fudged data.
This whole slew of circumstances could very well be seen in a different light, say years from now, when all this Covid hysteria had died down. Even though it would be readily acknowledged by anyone that the Government had a tough call and a bad hand whichever way you cut it, it’s still a government. It’s not a bunch of show ponies getting ready to keep a class of kindergarten kids amused.
These crippling lockdowns – the last phase in particular causing Rs. 100 billion in damage to add to all our current woes – should not have come just because (a) there was Covid hysteria in the country, and (b) just because sections of the medical community were asking for lockdowns. The fact is that they still do, even after the country was opened up after weeks of a crippling shutdown.
That’s no way to run a country – to be led by hysterical people and a shrill doctor community that are flagrantly fudging the numbers. These are people’s lives that we are talking about. Rs. 100 billion in economic damage means that people’s lives would be visited with much more misery than they already endure.
That’s all justified because there are people dying of Covid? It’s true some infected folk are dying of Covid. It could be anybody, you or me, if we are unlucky. But there are people dying of other causes too and the significant fact is that the deaths due to Covid are about as bad as deaths due to dengue, and no more.
There were hundreds of recorded dengue deaths in Sri Lanka due to the dengue pandemic. Yes, dengue was officially designated a pandemic too. The hundreds of dengue deaths in 2017 didn’t cause a blip on the radar, leave alone closures, or even isolation. Of course, dengue is not transmitted from human to human, it’s transmitted by mosquitoes. There should have still been a case for isolation of areas because theoretically, the misquotes from those given areas and their ability to carry the disease from human to human should have been curtailed.
No such thing was done. Why? Because nobody gave a toss about dengue deaths. Dengue was a scourge in tiny Third World countries such as ours. Coronavirus is the big ticket.
No, they rightly didn’t lock down for dengue because that would have been folly of the first order. These recent lockdowns in dire economic circumstances was folly of the first order. The deaths due to Covid here in this country are so far relatively insignificant too: Less than 1% of the entire population. That’s a fact. The medical community is entitled to its own opinions, not to its own facts.
The Government, which boasts of a highly sophisticated military intelligence network, was basically duped into more or less destroying the economy, and with it, people’s lives, one more time this last month. Sorry, but they have to claim ownership for that unconscionable loss, and if the economy doesn’t recover, be so contrite as to acknowledge liability and perhaps face the consequences.
(The writer is a former Editor-in-Chief of three national English language publications and a practising Attorney-at-Law. He is an Editors’ Guild award-winning columnist, and contributing writer and columnist for Nikkei Asian Review and South China Morning Post, while his editorials have been published in The Australian)Kapruka
Discover Kapruka, the leading online shopping platform in Sri Lanka, where you can conveniently send Gifts and Flowers to your loved ones for any event. Explore a wide range of popular Shopping Categories on Kapruka, including Toys, Groceries, Electronics, Birthday Cakes, Fruits, Chocolates, Automobile, Mother and Baby Products, Clothing, and Fashion. Additionally, Kapruka offers unique online services like Money Remittance, Astrology, Medicine Delivery, and access to over 700 Top Brands. Also If you’re interested in selling with Kapruka, Partner Central by Kapruka is the best solution to start with. Moreover, through Kapruka Global Shop, you can also enjoy the convenience of purchasing products from renowned platforms like Amazon and eBay and have them delivered to Sri Lanka.Send love straight to their heart this Valentine's with our thoughtful gifts!
Discover Kapruka, the leading online shopping platform in Sri Lanka, where you can conveniently send Gifts and Flowers to your loved ones for any event. Explore a wide range of popular Shopping Categories on Kapruka, including Toys, Groceries, Electronics, Birthday Cakes, Fruits, Chocolates, Automobile, Mother and Baby Products, Clothing, and Fashion. Additionally, Kapruka offers unique online services like Money Remittance, Astrology, Medicine Delivery, and access to over 700 Top Brands. Also If you’re interested in selling with Kapruka, Partner Central by Kapruka is the best solution to start with. Moreover, through Kapruka Global Shop, you can also enjoy the convenience of purchasing products from renowned platforms like Amazon and eBay and have them delivered to Sri Lanka.Send love straight to their heart this Valentine's with our thoughtful gifts!