THE efforts of many disciplined Malaysians are finally bearing fruit. On Saturday, the Health Ministry told the nation that only two new clusters were detected throughout the country. But not all of us are so disciplined. The dashboard of indiscipline says it all. The number of people without police permits trying to cross state borders. Parents taking children to crowded places. Long queues at supermarkets and restaurants, with little concern for social distancing.
These may be pockets of apathy in a large pool of discipline, but all it takes is one in the pocket to spoil it for all of us. We just cannot afford another wave. A second wave is always harsher in all its ways. There is another reason why we must get our discipline right. On Wednesday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) brought us really bad news: Covid-19 may never go away. Like the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), severe acute respiratory syndrome cornonavirus-2, or SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, may become endemic. We have to learn how to live with SARS-CoV-2 like we have learned to live with HIV.
According to WHO, smallpox, caused by the variola virus, is the only disease the world has got rid off, and that, too, in 1980. It would have been eradicated in 1977 when the last natural case was detected but for a laboratory accident in 1978 in Birmingham, England, WHO's record shows. A very long 3,000 years since it made its first appearance. None of us lives that long. Anything more than 60 years is a bonus. To live out even the six decades requires discipline. After all, being an adult means being disciplined in every way. Now with Covid-19, some who have not done so before must add hand hygiene and social discipline to their breakfast-to-bed curriculum. If we want to be recognised as adults, that is.
We are all anxious to know when will Covid-19 end. But as we have heard from WHO, it may never go away. WHO should know; it has all the experts. It is for this reason it becomes meaningless to attach a timeline to this disease. We just cannot wish it away. There are at least three reasons for this. Firstly, we know little about the disease and the virus that causes it. It is a "where do I begin" story. Is it spread by horseshoe bats as revealed by a researcher in China? What were the intermediate hosts? The pendulum is still swinging between pangolins and civet cats. Now add the United States' Wuhan whodunnit conspiracy spin to this complicated mix, it turns into an everything-is-possible tale.
Experts say getting rid off a disease, like what we did with smallpox, requires a two-stage process: containment and eradication. Some even add a third before we get to eradication: elimination. Either way, elimination and eradication are distant dreams. Eradication is possible if vaccines come our way. This again is between 18 and 24 months away. It is true that there are some 100 companies around the world trying to develop them. Nowhere is the saying, there is slip between the cup and lips, more true than in the development of vaccines. Many of them fail at the human trial stage. Let's not hitch our wagon to a star. We are at the containment stage, and it is a long haul. Let's focus on the here and now. The future is always there for those who take care of the present.