The saddest part of the tragedy currently playing out in Kwara, one which we can only pray does not trigger a community transmission of a dimension beyond easy management is not the recklessness on the part of many of the Actors involved but the fact that it is absolutely unwarranted and could have been easily avoided.
A man, educated and enlightened, comes in from UK under the shadow of Covid-19, either out of caution or at the outset of symptoms tending towards this disease reportedly decides to send the children away and isolate himself. At whatever point, for whatever reason, knowing about the robust management programme in Lagos, chose to leave Lagos for Kwara. That journey exposes whoever was with him, whoever else he met to a high risk of infection. It exposes wherever he might have been to the risk of contamination and serving as a vehicle for community transmission.
Unsure of how long he stays wherever, unsure if he was at a private facility as alleged, but at some point, the point at which people stand the greatest risk of infection, he elects or is aided by a Professor of Medicine and Senior Consultant at a Teaching Hospital to present himself there, concealing the most vital information, putting Health workers and patients at huge risk. Unconfirmed reports have it that the prompting to have him moved to the Isolation unit was rebuffed, yet al the parties involved in this action knew of his status.
The man sadly passes on, yet the Professor and whoever else was in on this would not relent. The Kwara State Government claims that it directed for the corpse not to be released, but they made away with it, exposing those who processed the body and those involved in the burial to a huge risk of infection. What was on the mind of these people carrying on with this serial acts of terrorism? What was going on in their minds carrying on with avoidable acts of possible mass infection?
Somehow, this story leaks and for those involved in this, there is no show of remorse, no letting go, no urge to quickly come clean so that the process of clearing the mess they created can start, rather it was all about pushback, harassing the Reporter, until pushed to the wall, he had to release the names involved.
Difficult to see a more absurd and callous concatenation of events choreographed, in utter recklessness and selfishness, to cause as much harm to innocent people who just happened to have been at some places doing their own thing. To think that many of the Actors involved are well educated and travelled! How can people who stepped out to administer care out of duty of care or some who might have come, out of love, to mourn with the family be so carelessly be put in the line of danger?
What is it that breeds such a wicked strain of selfishness in people that leads them rolling on the path of recklessness without a bother? Just tells you people will always be people. People will always get to all sorts. Predictably, some are already making a case for the Professor. It is just a mistake, made out of a desire to help a friend or is it family member! What won’t we hear? It is the Jennifer Syndrome.
Take the case of the keep-fitters in Lagos who have only just discovered their calling. They have opted for communal exercise in an age when common sense dictates social distancing. It helps you to process how people in the particular area of Lagos that is the epicenter of the disease can insist on going out in the face of these things to the extent that there will be Vehicle build-up on the road.
Take the nonsense being retailed by some opinion leaders, in a most unintelligent manner, in the name of crazy conspiracies linking the Coronavirus to 5G. Yet we have well educated people lining up behind these puerile thoughts, there is already an army standing with men who should be explaining their mission to those in charge of national security.
We are our own worst enemies. We are victims of the Jennifer Syndrome.
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