Covid and the numbers game
COVID-19 is a numbers game. The progress of the pandemic is tracked through numbers – numbers of people infected, the number of recoveries and deaths are the big columns we all look out for every day.
The finer details are added for analysis and explanations but headlines are made of numbers and that is what people look for and understand.
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Our emotions and psychological well-being are tied in with the numbers; When they go up anywhere in the world, we feel scared and unsafe. This is why the numbers coming out of the country’s health authorities make uncomfortable reading.
Ghana’s management of COVID-19 appears to be a game of two halves. Our authorities appeared assured and in complete control of the game plan in the first half.
To make the analogy with football, the coach seemed to lead the team with swagger and the players responded with dribbles and glass-cut passes across the field before the strikers delivered unstoppable goals.
That was the first half; before we crossed the 10,000 mark. The second half is going well but some of the swagger has gone; the coach, team handlers and players don’t look so self-assured and suddenly the game has gone into defensive mode. What is happening?
The answer is simple. The numbers are going up and that is the wrong direction. Even when the numbers passed the five thousand mark we were still assured by the accompanying narrative that the rise in numbers was due to more tests, so we were invited to read that as a positive development.
In any case, the detail was assuring: most infections were mild; most people were asymptomatic and best of all the number of deaths remained low.
Now, the tide appears to be changing, especially with the deaths column. To make matters worse, the dead now include people who are known such as the Mayor of the Twin city of Sekondi-Takoradi, while the Minister of Health, who had been the public face of COVID-19 management, is recovering from the virus.
We don’t have credible opinion polls in the country, so it is difficult to track people’s responses to the management of the pandemic, but opinions expressed in the media as well as credible anecdotal evidence gathered from social media, suggest that people are getting worried about the numbers and the trend indicates that our anxiety levels are set to rise even higher in the next few weeks.
What is even more worrying is that the numbers show that the disease is growing apace in the developing world as the numbers go south in places like Europe and the USA.
Throughout the months of February, March and April, Africa appeared to have dodged the most virulent claws of the virus as it tightened its grip in Italy, Spain, the UK and USA.
Those countries took resolute action and locked down for several weeks in the clear expectation of “leveling the curve” as a result of those actions.
Some countries like New Zealand and South Korea even acted smarter. South Korea embarked on a massive testing programme while New Zealand took drastic measures even before a single person was infected in the country.
Ghana’s three-week lockdown was one of the shortest in COVID-19 history. The government pronounced itself satisfied that it had achieved the aims of the lockdown.
Some of us argued that given the social and economic impact of the lockdown, the government had no choice but open up the country.
The medical establishment was not too happy about the decision but were persuaded by the President that the decision was in the country’s best interest.
The ending of the lockdown came with other restrictions designed to hold the virus at bay. For example, religious and social events were put on hold and that order was mostly obeyed.
The President called on Ghanaians to take personal responsibility by obeying the prescribed protocols of handwashing, using hand sanitisers, wearing a mask and practicing social distancing.
To be honest, this is where we may have slipped collectively. THERE WAS HARDLY ANY SOCIAL DISTANCING ANYWHERE IN THE COUNTRY. People just got on with it, and even the initial enthusiasm for handwashing waned.
One theory that has been advanced on social media is that people took the ending of the lockdown as a sign that the pandemic had ended.
It is a credible idea given the manner in which most Ghanaians lapsed into carelessness immediately after the lockdown.
The government’s own attitude seemed to support those who thought the pandemic had ended.
On the Sunday afternoon before the president announced the ending of the lockdown, checkpoints in Accra and its environs were all dismantled and security officers could be seen sitting nonchalantly by the roadside in contrast to their hyperactive behaviour just a few hours before.
In short order, soldiers were withdrawn and the police reverted to other duties. This signaled to the public that we could revert to our old ways too. And we did.
With alacrity and vengeance. There was almost no sign of enforcing the government’s own guidelines.
In a country in which the state has failed to enforce a simple law requiring motorcyclists to wear crash helmets, voluntary compliance was never an option.
At the moment, the rise in numbers may jolt us into taking more personal responsibilities but we cannot take that for granted. We have to hark back to the question of how the pandemic is being communicated.
It is the view of this column that we need more variety in the nature of the communication because we are a fragmented public and a one-size-fit-all information will not work. Furthermore, there is an assumption that when the information is provided, the media will automatically provide messages for their audiences.
It does not always work that way unless the managers of the pandemic have a communication plan in which the role of the media is pre-determined.
There is also an assumption that once the message hits home people will continue to act as expected without constant reminders.
Today, one can see many Veronica buckets standing in front of shops without water, soap and tissue.
In March and April, shopkeepers enthusiastically promoted the washing of hands before entering. Most shops appear to have given up.
The point is that the numbers are going up because we, collectively, are not doing as much as we should to keep them down.
COVID-19 is a numbers game and most people can count. The accompanying narrative may be soothing but numbers don’t lie.
