Passengers screened upon arrival at the Kilimanjaro International Airport (KIA) in northern Tanzania on February 28, 2020. PHOTO | FILBERT RWEYEMAMU | AFP
This week I propose to bring you a simple questionnaire, hoping you will not treat all my questions as being purely hypothetical, seeing as they have a bearing on some realities we may be living through right now.
Here goes the survey: If a year ago our people started dying from some deadly disease which then seemed to disappear but later made an apparent reappearance, they would be wary, fearing for the worst, wouldn’t they?
It would be even more terrifying if last year’s disease appeared to have not eased up in other countries apart from our own, wouldn’t it? If you were told that our apparent luck with the disease was due to our prayers and fasts and you believed that kind of story, you would be dangerously ignorant, wouldn’t you?
If you are, say, Catholic you are naturally expected to ask yourself why your prayers are heard and not those of the Vatican, aren’t you? In the hierarchy of relations, the Pope should be closer to the Big Man than some of us, shouldn’t he?
The Pope is the head of perhaps the biggest heaven-bound organisation on earth, isn’t he? And whatever he says gets the ear of the Lord, doesn’t it? If you came to believe that the Great Wizard would listen to you rather than his Envoy on Earth you would be engaging in self-delusion, wouldn’t you? Or maybe you are not such a true believer, are you?
Now, if all the media organisations of the world are saying that this disease is still killing hundreds of thousands of people in so many countries, you wouldn’t have a reason to disbelieve them, would you? And if some of those deaths are taking place in countries adjacent to yours, you know you are under threat, don’t you? The evil virus doesn’t need a visa to cross borders, does it?
If by chance you know that the virus kills by making it hard for them to breathe, and you are told there is no virus in your cohort, only people failing to breathe, you know someone is trying to be too clever by half, don’t you? In such circumstances, you take care of yourself and of those close to you, don’t you?
The health guidelines are easy to follow, aren’t they? And they can be understood by everybody, can’t they? People generally dislike being told what to do and what not to do, don’t they? But sometimes these strictures must be borne with for the good of us all, mustn’t they?
When many countries have been forced to go into lockdown, we have enjoyed relative freedom in Tanzania, haven’t we? Now, we cannot complain if we tell each other to avoid crowded spaces, to sanitise and to wear a mask in public for our own good and for the good of those we interact with, can we?
We have witnessed how some people elsewhere have politicised health awareness issues, literally bullying people into not wearing masks, haven’t we?
And those who want to browbeat others into exposing themselves and their colleagues dare not admit it when they lose someone close who has contracted Covid-19, dare they? They announce that their relative had breathing challenges, or pneumonia, don’t they? But we all know that these euphemistic statements are barefaced lies, don’t we?
People should be asking themselves questions that are so obvious, shouldn’t they? If you think wearing a mask is offensive to you maybe you should ask yourself why you think not wearing a mask is not offensive to others, shouldn’t you?
If the claim on the one hand is that not wearing a mask threatens life but on the other hand there is no claim that wearing one has the same outcome, then we should find the first claim to be more acceptable and less costly, shouldn’t we?
Some time ago we were told that a cure had been found in an island state in the Indian Ocean, weren’t we? That same island nation has had to eat humble pie and declared Covid-19 a serious problem, hasn’t it?
If we are going to maintain the stance that we have defeated Covid-19 while we know that this is not the case, we are doing ourselves a deadly disservice, aren’t we? The illnesses and deaths resulting from this disinformation can be traced directly to this desire to obscure the truth, can’t it?
There are health protocols to be observed if a death has been caused by Covid-19, aren’t there? And if we do not tell the truth as to the exact cause of death and people catch the virus because of that, we are partly responsible for their infection, aren’t we? I trust it is better to tell the cause of death and save lives, isn’t it?
If you claim to be a believer, whatever your opiate, and you lie about the cause of death of a person, and people catch the virus because of your lie, you are partly responsible for their illness, and possibly their death, aren’t you?
I have made my case sufficiently clear, haven’t I?
Jenerali Ulimwengu is now on YouTube via jeneralionline tv. E-mail: jenerali@gmail.com
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