Friday 29 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in Capital, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 20, 2020 - April 26, 2020

If you have been watching the news, like I have, you will keep hearing the phrase “getting to the other side” as if it is a destination that we can book a train or air ticket to. The reality is, most of us will get there — this place in the future that the government and health experts tell us to stay home, duduk diam-diam and wait patiently for, and we will get there soon enough.

The question is, what does this “other side” look like? Most tellingly, we won’t be able to shake hands or hug, unless they are people who already live with you in the same house. There will be no parties of more than a certain number of people. Well, you can’t practise social distancing within a limited space, can you?

Meanwhile, we have to live in this purgatory-like existence, between then — let’s call it the pre-pandemic period — and the future, that is “the other side” or the new normal, until the human race is successfully inoculated against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes Covid-19.

Presumably, when a vaccine is found, life will return to normal. Except by then, will we still remember what it is like not having to queue one metre apart to get into a grocery store or not to shrink back in fear whenever someone coughs or sneezes? Or not having to wear a mask whenever we are out? Will we still have the freedom to travel to wherever we want? Will we still have jobs, will democracy survive?

(Okay, the cabin fever got the better of me there.)

But every cloud has a silver lining, in this case a faint one. Apart from bonding with family members, becoming better cooks and breathing in cleaner air, you now have a story to tell your children and grandchildren. I remember my late mother telling me stories about the Japanese occupation, the emergency and May 13. So, long after we get “there”, we will have many “hardship” stories to share with future generations who may never have to live through this (fingers crossed).

And from anecdotes on social media, it seems this period under the Movement Control Order is harder to endure, mostly because we came into this from a comfortable position. Although being shot or beheaded by the Kempeitai sounds scary indeed, fighting an invisible enemy is pretty nerve-wracking too.

In fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, countries led by women appear to be doing a better job. Just look at Taiwan, which is led by former law professor Tsai Ing-wen. At the time of writing, the country had kept infection and deaths from Covid-19 at an envious 393 and 6 respectively. Tsai sprang into action in January, introducing 124 measures to control the spread of the coronavirus.

In Denmark, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand and Norway, the number of infected was low while in Germany, although the country has a high number of positive cases, the fatality rate is lower than that of Italy, Spain, France, the UK, the US and China. Of course, each country is different in certain ways, for example, the median age of the population, the geography and family structure. But the one thing the group of countries mentioned above have in common is female leadership.

Now, a certain male leader of a superpower has shifted his pandemic strategy to blaming others, namely the press, state leaders and China.

But there is now a plot twist to the origins of the coronavirus. Some scientists have expressed scepticism about its having originated in a wet market in Wuhan. Cambridge researchers also found that the variant closest to bats is not the dominant strain in Wuhan.

Hopefully, the mystery will be solved soon, compared to lingering questions about the origin of the Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times”. It is said to have originated in China, although the phrase does not exist in Chinese.

More googling took this writer to an account that says that the phrase came from a mistranslation by an Englishman who was told by a Chinese to “go to hell”. This was back in the 19th century, when there was no Google Translate, so you will have to forgive the Englishman for his mistake.

Is this true? Who knows?

But if you ever get this message in a fortune cookie, just remember that it is a curse, not a blessing.

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