THE PANDEMIC YEAR: A THUMBNAIL SKETCH FROM MALAYSIA

 by Howl Pillay

15 Jan 2021

First a confession...

I am addicted to History. For half a century and more. I see the world through its lens.

Spelt with an “H”, it is about us - race, religion, politics, war, peace,economics, sociology,

anthropology, archaeology, science and technology…. All that we know of ourselves. Thus far.   

Enter, COVID-19 in late January 2020 when ushering in the Year of the Rat, the first animal sign

of the Chinese zodiac. The legend is that the Rat outfoxed the Ox, hiding in its ear to be first to

show up at the behest of the Jade Emperor, beating the ox to the draw. Such trickery!

Wuhan? Ah! The combined cities of Wuchang and Hankou on the Yangtze.

The Wuchang Uprising of 1911? That led to the fall of the Ching? Yes, History. Slowly but surely

the virus turns fear into gloom. Pandemic! We don’t panic. Ignorance is bliss. Still time for

politicking.

Then the resignation, driven by hubris and lots of lansi, of that old race horse (pun intended).

More whispers. More rumours. A mad rush to the Palace. Not the Jade Emperor’s. Then like

the zodiac Rat, a new Gomen jumps out the sleeve of the previous one, claiming legitimacy.

There is much indignation all around. What! A backdoor Gomen? What has become of the will

of the people? The Sheraton movers and shakers have more tricks up their sleeves. Remember

the zodiac Rat? They cling to power on the coattails of Covid-19 even as we suspect the stats.

The Westminster model has turned Eastminster.“Oh, East is East and West is West, and never

the twain shall meet”. Shall appoint, may appoint, will appoint….go on debating but the

ironclad rule of the Eastminster model is: “Saya yang berkuasa”. I am in charge now. 

The months pass. The statistics are grim the world over. The mighty are on their knees - rich

countries, powerful leaders, whole industries. Billions of the poor suffer in a still prosperous

world. Wealth inequality comes home to roost. And sloth, laziness and wastefulness too.

Closer home, our politics turns rotten by the day, reminiscent of the bitter tussle to become

Sultan of Perak circa 1870. Roaming the length of our first tolled highway, the Perak River,

the claimants, and there were three then, rallied their geng for the bitter fight. Same. Same.

Months later after more shuffling, Saudara Anwar claims he has the Ace, the Chow Kai.

Negara-Ku Najib has the cash. Banyaknya! And Tun M is the Joker in the pack. Game over?

No lah! Like in the ending scene of Animal Farm, Abah Mu throws a King on the table. Kantoi! 

Meanwhile, the “Never waste a crisis” politicians of the world are running riot. But ours

are a class act, putting to shame the wily traders of the flea-ridden Kabul Camel Market.

By now the Pandemic has taken us by the collective scruff of our necks, its vice-like grip,

unrelenting.

The mosques go quiet, church bells fall silent and priests offer prayers in empty temples.

The faithful pray in their hearts while the atheists smile at the impotence of the Divine.

More shops and SMEs shutter up; the economy nose-dives. Debt piles up. Apa lagi Covid

mau?

The new Gomen empties the coffers to stay in power. Taxpayer’s money is handed out

to the rakyat jelata, now the personified MakCik Kiah, running a warong. What of the Achi

hawking Indian food from a gerai? Curry favour, she is told. The wanton mee lady?

In a hotpot surely.      

But there is not enough money to kill two birds with one stone and have enough left over

to line their own pockets and that of the geng. The rakyat jelata is now told by the quinoa

eating politician, “If you can’t eat nasi, eat your EPF”. Common man vs Conman, huh?

No points for guessing the winner. To save themselves the rakyat jelata must cannibalise

their future. Sama macam Gomen kita. You have a problem with that? It's not hard to do with

some practice: lift right leg, take aim and kick that bloody can down the road.

Susah ke bruder? 

By now the rakyat jelata should know that the ancient war cry of “Agama, Bangsa dan

Negara”, so beloved of our ruling politicians is merely a cover for the three Akus: Untuk

kroni Aku, Keluarga Aku dan Aku. The rakyat jelata are merely the screen for such

skullduggery.

Enough of Aku punya Gomen! Business as usual has no future. Like a giant spotlight,

the pandemic has exposed the good, bad and ugly. We have a front row view of History in

the making. The next act in the drama will take the stage shortly. Now it's intermission time. 

We wait with bated breath. Who will save us with a vaccine? There is time yet for a peek

at History. Yes, we have survived wars, famines, diseases and climate change. Long ago, we

even survived near-extinction by trekking out of Africa, reduced to a few thousand breeding

pairs. 

And we are heir to the same emotions experienced by that ragged band of early

humans - joy, sadness, avarice, envy, anger and all other thoughts and feelings too.

Like them, we too can smell a rat a mile away like when the Gomen called the deferment of

loans as aid. 

Stage and set have changed many times since those very early days but we kept faith with

the human spirit. Then enter ideology via politics and religion. Envy, fear and hatred of the

other is the new binding agent. Mind control is the new power tool. Down with Hammer and

Sickle!

But our sixth sense never fails to warn us that when others control our minds, they rule it;

that those who rule our minds, rule the world. Witness the endless ranks of suicide bombers

with their brainless minds. In the midst of the pandemic, bombs go off in the name of peace.

That tough trek out of Africa with its many twists, turns, and dead-ends, scattered us around

the globe. It shaped our very being. In faraway places, in forgotten time we came up with

language, art, literature and modes of thinking that were peculiar to a place and a people.

Our differences are many. Celebrate! The free human spirit is universal. Celebrate! Science

and technology belongs to all mankind. Celebrate! Different people can live together by

accepting, not subjugating the other. We are not nails to be hammered down for sticking out.  

The current world population is 7.8 billion. That’s a lot of people and a lot of differences.

We should not even try to make us all believe the same things and act and think the same

way. Sisyphus belongs to myth, not modern reality. Shame on those who preach otherwise.

Shame!

There is movement on the stage of History in the making. The vaccine-men are here

bringing the gifts of a free mind bent on saving bodies and not souls! We see five men on

the stage wearing lab coats. All of them scientists, holding vials not magic wands and amulets!  

The first of the five is Chinese. Surprised? Many are of the view Chinese citizens under the CCP

have closed minds. Wrong! Through the ages, highly bureaucratic dynastic rule kept a tight grip

on society. To survive and prosper individuals kept their minds open and sharp. 

There is not a place you cannot see them run a business or practise their craft. To succeed in

foreign places you must surely take the world as it is. Open-mindedness at its best! To say it

again, the Chinese under the CCP are an open minded people living in a closed society.

Next to him, a European. The product of the Age of Enlightenment; of centuries of fighting

to free his body and his soul from oppression by Kings, dictators and corrupt Gomens. A work

in progress but without a doubt open minded and living in a society kept open with Rule of Law.

To his left is an ugly American, holding a thick pile of papers, perhaps a contract. He looks

like the European, a product of Old Mother Europe. On the wild side and mercantile to the

extreme, he comes from an open society where open minds from the world over, flourish.

The Russian is unmistakable in this group. Taciturn and aloof his eyes shine with a sense

of self containment. Independence even. He is clutching a handful of vials in either hand

all proudly marked ‘Made in Rossiya” and stamped “For Internal Use Only”. Russia is forever!

In the midst of this group is an Indian, lean and wiry with eyes that yearn for engagement and

dialogue. And this will surprise many - the Indian lives in an open society but half of them have

closed-minds that endlessly hark back to a past they see as good and virtuous.

The paths of these five men have criss-crossed many times in seminars, symposiums, research

labs and universities. They share one thing in common - an unquenchable thirst for knowledge

and understanding. In their open minds  and their hearts the human spirit is alive and well.

And us? Will we ever share the stage with the other five gentlemen? The honest answer:

we missed the boat when al-Ghazali wrote "The Incoherence of the Philosophers" in the

eleventh century, rejecting in full Neoplatonic thought and Aristotelian philosophy.

Prior to this, the early luminaries of the Islamic world like al-Farabi and Ibn Sina were staunch

exponents of harmony between faith and philosophy; of reason and religion. Then al-Ghazali

brought it crashing down. But not without a fight. The flame still flickered, refusing to die.

Decades later, the polymath Ibn Rushd, Averroes to the Western world, wrote a direct refutation

of al-Ghazali, "The Incoherence of the Incoherence" to restore the old balance. Rejected in the

Islamic world, the book influenced thinkers in the West for centuries. 

Dreams for a proud and prosperous nation shattered, our lives have been reduced to that

ending passage in "The Great Gatsby": So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back

ceaselessly into the past.

SUSPICION!!! IS DR. NOOR HISHAM'S ARMS TWISTED BEHIND HIS BACK?

By; Toffee

 

I am honestly sorry to say this about a man I have the greatest admiration for, but of late I am becoming increasingly suspicious that he is indeed not free to to do his job the way he should. I would like to leave it at that for the time being.

Three times in early October I predicted that our rate of Covid 19 cases would rise to 1000 and beyond before the end of October and I was right, I said that would happen unless we had a full MCO like we did in response to the Tabligh cases initially from March, the Tabligh cases were not so alarming but we locked down, it cost us, but we paid the price and we did extremely well, we were almost at normal, then what normally happens, happened stupid politicians created this problem of multiple clusters created singularly by their folly which they do not accept to this day like they usually do after causing havoc for the rakyat.

Is he being intimidated or part of the game?

The Buck they say stops at the top and therefore Muhyddin has to take the rap for this and he can't run away from it.

Our failure in governance is because the people (psychopaths actually) we call political leaders do not take responsibility they are scared to say "it is  my fault" and instead pass the buck down the line or sideways.

Till today I wonder what made Dr. Noor Hashim allow returnees from Sabah after the state elections, when Sabah was so heavily infected to the extent political party officials who went to Sabah for short visits of  two to three days came back testing positive,  enter the country and go home without quarantine, to me that was a very careless decision to say the least. I really can't imagine what made him do that other then political pressure being weighed on him to bear.

 I have questioned it in my earlier articles where I predicted the 1000 cases and more a day before the end of October 2020. And for Noor Hashim to have allowed it reeks of some intervention from some higher ups to create this spike, it can't be anything else, this was a sure way of declaring an emergency and the good doctor must surely have known it, that allowing these people in without quarantine was a sure bet for multiple clusters, and that is what we got.

Now think, who wanted the emergency?

Do you really believe the doctor would have made such a careless decision of allowing returnees from a heavily infected state back without quarantine?  Hew would have known the consequences so why?

Then as I predicted before the end of October after we breached the 1000 mark.

At end October I have told those close to me  that the figure  will exceed 5000 cases a day if we do not have MCO a lock down as we had in the first instance now been that prediction is being rubbished by  the findings of the "Imperial College of London's MRC centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis" they are predicting almost 7500 cases per day by December 8. My prediction of 5000 is 2500 cases short per day.

Now I know  we are really heading for that direction but wish to remain with my numbers in the hope the Imperial College's figures are wrong - a distant hope, I amsure the government knows this and that leads me to assume  with Muhyiddin the rationale is we can afford a few thousand deaths perhaps more all for the sake of his chair as Prime Minister of Malaysia. T

Those stakes to many of our politicians is not too high a price to pay

The politicians on all sides of the divide will not have it we can't afford it so they say, but they can afford billions and millions on useless unproductive projects as shown in our 2020 budget.

We have to draw a line or are we prepared to allow the people to die helplessly?

 THE LONGER WE TAKE TO DECLARE A FULL MCO THE MORE EXPENSIVE IT IS GOING TO BE, BUT BELIEVE ME WE WILL HAVE TO HAVE ONE SO CHOOSE NOW OR LATER WHEN THE COST AND THE PERIOD OF THE CLOSURE IS VERY MUCH HIGHER.

I warned in early October the longer we wait the more expensive it becomes, there is a break point after which it will not matter, and these idiots will only give up and run for cover then and believe me they will leave the country or live in sheltered Zones so that they are not affected and leave us to face hell.

Even if the Pfizer Vaccine is available we do not have the basic storage  and logistics facilities to handle it. the Vaccine has to be stored in temperatures at minus seventy (-70) degrees Celsius, even if we begin now it will take up till March 2022 when we are fully equipped to handle that vaccine on a large scale, so i the meantime be prepared, the politicians will get their dose and we wait.

Globally it has been revealed that the most people who die of Covid 19 are the people from the low income group, yes and among them the aged those above 60, the diabetics, the hypertension cases and people with other complications and we have so many of them around even Dr, Noor Hashim was reported on14 October as having said that a huge number of diabetics do not even know they have diabetes, that makes all our assumptions of the fatalities per hundred cases all wrong, and the potential for more deaths even higher.

The country needs to go into a total lock - down for at least 8 weeks and NOW to bring this scourge under check or we'll  go to worse than I predicted if the prediction of the Imperial College of England is to believed in our case, which is more than 7000 cases per day.  

Malaysiakini reports that, ; 

"The number of Covid-19 cases in Malaysia is expected to rise steadily over the next four weeks unless stronger interventions are introduced to curtail its spread, according to projections by Imperial College London’s MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis."

"Its model estimated that the number of Covid-19 infections in Malaysia is projected to increase steadily to about 7,467 infections per day by Dec 8 if no new measures are introduced to curb its spread. It also projected there would be about 16 Covid-19 deaths per day." 

 Imperial college is recognised by Who as one of the foremost centres of Global infectious disease Analysis

                                         

 

A great number of Malaysians believe that the figures given by Dr.Noor Hisham are tweaked, there is this  very secretive approach to the cases in the Klang valley and its clusters, the areas are not identified. 

The Klang district is a huge district with the third largest Population in the country and yet when it comes to reporting on where the cases in Klang are it just says "Klang", many a  time even the word Klang is not mentioned, the same goes for Shah Alam and the rest of the Klang Valley, for goodness sake Klang is so much bigger than Melaka, it is the third most populated town in Malaysia, it is not a city for reasons best known the those concerned, but it is one of the largest towns with a population in the excess of 800,000 people so can we be a bit more precise?

Does this not indicate a case of undermining the Selangor state government who have been constantly asking for the localities to be able to institute better controls down the line?

Dr. Noor Hashim says the Ministry  is not revealing the areas as these may stigmatise the people form these areas,  and that seems to be the case only in Selangor but in the case of Melaka they could spell out the detailed location when they revealed "Infenion Technologies in Batu Berendam, "  and more localities, in fact they do it for all other areas. 

Isn't this a dangerous approach? 

So why this approach if it is not a way to undermine the concerned Selangor Government?

Should people not know the dangerous areas?

Why is it in other districts they are so location  specific but the case is not the same with Selangor and the Federal territories?

Why ? Why? Why?

ARE THERE  DELIBERATE ATTEMPTS TO UNDERMINE THE SELANGOR GOVERNMENT?

Is all these being done in a deliberate attempt to undermine the Selangor Government?

It is not only Covid, it is also water , there is a bigger hand in the Klang Valley Water pollution than meets the eye.

The cutting of water on Deepavalli in Klang was no mere coincidence it was to undermine the state Government as Klang has a one of the largest Indian populations in the country and the people are well aware of it.

The fury against the authorities who are trying to undermine this State Government will be let out in the ballot box.

There is talk of trying to force the state Government to buy water from a neighboring state under terms that are not acceptable to the people of Selangor represented by their elected representatives in the state government, oh yes, they know about it and the talk is all over if you haven't received the message you are out of the loop.

Selangor has enough water resources all they need is that it  be managed by the state not by Federal Government owned agencies, as long as they are managed as they always were in the past we'll not have cases of pollution except in cases of sabotage.

We have discovered that the pollution being caused recently is  highly suspicious and deliberate, and yet no real action has been taken thus far.

Then there is talk about other  deliberate attempts to pollute the water and make it untenable for drinking by creating massive and environmentally unfriendly projects along the rivers. 

Buying the water from the alternate supplier from the neighboring supplier,   has huge  long term benefits not for the Selanor populace but for highly placed  individuals from both states, and the benefits they say run in the billions per year and  the long term for these individuals which the ordinary Selangor folk will have to fork out of their own pockets  h to pay, but why should we, we might as well use a fraction of that to manage sour own resources.

On hind thought why fault Singapore for its water transactions with Johore when we are attempting worse things?

These are reasons we have to speak at the Ballot box,and louder thanthe last time we now know the rogues we should never give them the vote.

Judging from what is happening in Selanor it will be naive to shrug off these suspicions as many in Selangor are convinced this is the truth. 

HOW DOES THIS SABOTAGE AFFECT COVID 19 IN SELANGOR?

The people of Selangor in the face of all these happenings are rather fixated to a fact or an untruth that the numbers of the Covid 19 infections being read out daily are tweaked. 

My friends all over the country express the same opinion.

With so high numbers the good Dr, Hisham Noor says "we'll have it under control soon",  but  how can that be?

He seems to be talking nonsense, and why is the doctor talking nonsense?

There are new clusters springing up daily and the count is  increasing by the day the math gives a completely different picture, so what is the doctor really saying or up to?

We have little doubt in our minds that the good doctor will not do anything evil, but we do not trust his superiors, his superiors are known traitors, they will lie through their teeth, they are desperately trying to get an emergency proclaimed, and is this a tool for them?

Then on hindsight we have had cases of men who spoke so well only to unmask themselves and change their tune so be prepared.

We have a classic case of an outsider in parliament, strange things happen in Malaysian Politics, integrity is cheaper than a packet of Nasi Lemak it can be bought and sold.

Really nothing surprises they want that budget 2020 that will keep them in office they are hoping to get it  passed, how much money is exchanging hands right now God alone knows besides Muhyiddin,  they know if it is tabled it will not be approved the majority is against it, the only way out they see is to threaten us with the inability to pay the front liners and increase the Covid count and we feel the Doctor has his arms twisted behind his back.

 

 The Imperial College London’s MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis." has given a prediction even more catostrophic than mine I stopped at 5000, they have taken it to clocse to 7500 daily.