Ngimanene na Muchere
Elder Lister
*Long post alert!!*
*As received*
Dr. Samson Misango:
Today is 13th June 2020.
I didn't think I would have to write down this, but here I go again, exactly 3 months after the first case of Coronavirus was diagnosed in Kenya on 13th March 2020.
I did not imagine that we would still be here, doing the same thing, ruining lives, testing people, spreading fear and panic, sounding caring and then ruining more lives.
Flashback to 11th March 2020, one day before my birthday anniversary, when WHO declared Covid 19 disease a pandemic and all hell broke lose.
In a series of well choreographed events, all world leaders came up with these loud proclamations of lockdowns and public health pronouncements that defied logic and science..all aimed at letting the citizens know that we have a very deadly viral pandemic that is so infectious and so deadly and that it is killing people in droves.
All news media were already full of the Armageddon from China that was being unleashed in European countries, spreading to Africa to cause even more chaos on our poor health care system. We needed a saviour!
The west was our saviour, waiting to advice us on how to protect ourselves from this very deadly pandemic. (Are we this gullible?)
Many people got scared..no...got petrified. Including health care workers. They became known as front line workers who were on a suicide mission to save humanity by tending to Covid positive patients... highly infectious and dying patients.
Can you imagine we joined the world in organising ourselves to clap for health care workers even as we denied them protective clothing in their fight against the "deadly" virus?
Sceptics like me and others were vilified as uncaring souls who were out of touch with science and medicine.."Can't you see the havoc in Italy and Spain?", we were asked.
Common sense and science was thrown out of the window as we scampered to follow western directions on how to flatten the curve to contain the pandemic.
Very eminent persons in the media, political, security and research sectors in Kenya went overboard warning us about how dangerous the pandemic was, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
I do not know at which point I gave up trying to reason with people on a scare mission against innocent and gullible Kenyans, innocent Kenyans who actually believe that their government means well...
It is why they vote the way they do...they actually believe what they are told..
I now know that this is the scenario replicated in so many other departments...people who believe in doing the right thing to improve society are completely outmuscled and outshouted by the system people who do things because they have personal interests, without a care for the public they are supposed to be working for.
Any person with the intelligence of a class 4 drop out (not to be insulting to any class 4 dropouts reading this) will tell you that there is no way that our Covid 19 patient zero was the young "brave" girl who volunteered herself for testing, 2 days after WHO declared the disease a pandemic....ie it was not because of our efficient screening system, but entirely by chance, that we confirmed our first case.
We should be ashamed of this fact, but we celebrated it..! Kenya records first Covid Case..our headlines screamed...
For a volunteer case!
Then we embarked on a ridiculous and futile exercise called lockdowns, curfews, contact tracing, targeted testing, quarantine, hospitalisation, more testing, announcements, scaremongering and even more testings ...to flatten the curve...a non existent curve entirely based on available funds.
Let me educate you...to have an effective containment strategy, we needed a vibrant disease surveillance system to pick out the first cases (not volunteer cases), contact tracing of all positives and isolation of them ALL WITHIN 24hrs of testing to be able to have any chance to contain the spread.
Very effective measures in a country like South Korea or China with a system that can monitor all citizens in its boundaries to a dot. Where the country can isolate but still feed and maintain the upkeep of the isolated persons.
Translating those measures to a developing country like Kenya, with over 3/4 of the population living in informal settlements where social distancing is impossible, and who depend on social interactions for their livelihoods, was a dumb idea...I do not even understand how our health officials considered it, unless they were motivated or intimidated by other factors.
They have their story and maybe one day they will share with us.
By the time the first case was confirmed in Kenya, the virus was so widely spread in the country, but we decided to pretend that the young girl was our patient zero.
Remember, we have had medical and social catastrophes where we have lost human life..avoidable and preventable deaths...and we still do, including road traffic accidents, diarrhoea diseases, pneumonia, Malaria, Floods, Hunger, Cancer etc...
We have never stopped our country because of these avoidable unfortunate situations.
The justification for testing and loudly announcing positive cases from the precincts of Afya House, telling people how many deaths we have had, has become the norm...as the officials pontificate on how well or bad we are flattening our curve. Telling us how to behave normally or abnormally.
Three months down the road, we all now know that this is a very mild but highly infectious disease that we will live with but someone somewhere still thinks that we should stop our country to "contain" it.
Newsflash...this is a community disease or condition...we will live with it whether we like it or not..and it is not killing us. And it will be changing with different seasons, getting milder as it coexists with us...in perpetuity.
If you don't believe that..please understand that it became widespread in Eastleigh, Kibera, Mathare, Kawangware, Prisons, Refugee camps, Old Town and all other populous areas...these cases lost the attention of our testers, or sponsors...but we did not have many unusual deaths reported in those places, even after telling the residents there "stay with your disease"
Instead, we have people with life threatening diseases dying in hospitals or homes and anyone who tests positive is labelled a Covid death...
What are we trying to achieve with these useless testings that don't tell the real Covid positive picture and the exaggerated Covid deaths?
I listen to some of my colleagues trying to justify the continued "containment" measures and I don't know whether to laugh or cry. We act so concerned about the life of the vulnerable in our society and the need to protect them from a Covid death but the same vulnerables are dying in droves due to other causes that we don't care about.
What is so special about a possible Covid death that we put the lives of everyone else at stake to prevent it?
I would understand if we were killing one person to save a thousand lives...the converse is nonsensical.
I do my public hospital ward rounds and come across many patients dying from many other causes who are putting on face masks as they lay there on their death beds, and I want to cry...they believe they are doing the right thing by keeping those masks on because their government and experts has told them to.
I see villagers in their expansive farms toiling at their lands, some with face masks on, believing they are doing the right thing, because we have told them, nay, forced them to.
I see Kenyans who have lost employment.and others who have lost livelihoods as they struggle to obey restrictions meant to contain a pandemic that doesn't have any meaning to them..but they have to obey the law.
I see people supporting the "containment" being people who are public servants or employees with a guaranteed salary...talking at the desperate souls who don't care about this disease but just want to go through the day alive.
I also see many Kenyans who have been scared senseless about this disease that their government has made them fear even more than hunger and it has made them not visit or bury their loved ones with dignity.
I see a government unleashing its might to prevent people (who care less about the disease than about their lives) from holding gatherings to send off their dead in the only way they know how to....while other more privileged people do what they want when they want.
The same government that is loudly telling them not to act normally or the disease will treat them abnormally is telling them not to stigmatize the people with the disease..as it buries the dead at night. What an oxymoron.
Perfectly healthy citizens who test positive are being hospitalised in hospitals meant for the sick, yet we have a health care system that cannot even handle our genuinely sick patients...on whose instructions?
What kind of madness are we engaging in? Has everyone completely lost their minds?
Haloooooo......is anyone listening?
How can a whole nation be hurtling down such a senseless pathways when we have all these "educated" public health advisers and political kingpins who are called upon to give advice on matters of national importance?
Does anyone care anymore?
The more we test, the more positives we will get...and the more we will do nothing sensible after the testing. So, why are we testing? What is the end point?
Is it when we run out of funds, or when we get tired, or when the west asks us to stop, or when we all test positive, or when we get a vaccine, or when we wake up? Haloooooo......!
We laugh at pragmatic leaders who have stood up for their citizens by refusing to copy paste these western solutions and we actually believe the trash that is spewed out against these leaders...
All Kenyans of goodwill, if you care about your country, say no to this false new normal that doesn't improve our lives but rather destroys it.
Coronavirus is a highly infectious but mild infection that should never have made us stop our country and stigmatize people.
Practice good basic hygiene to stop the spread of infectious diseases.
*As received*
Dr. Samson Misango:
Today is 13th June 2020.
I didn't think I would have to write down this, but here I go again, exactly 3 months after the first case of Coronavirus was diagnosed in Kenya on 13th March 2020.
I did not imagine that we would still be here, doing the same thing, ruining lives, testing people, spreading fear and panic, sounding caring and then ruining more lives.
Flashback to 11th March 2020, one day before my birthday anniversary, when WHO declared Covid 19 disease a pandemic and all hell broke lose.
In a series of well choreographed events, all world leaders came up with these loud proclamations of lockdowns and public health pronouncements that defied logic and science..all aimed at letting the citizens know that we have a very deadly viral pandemic that is so infectious and so deadly and that it is killing people in droves.
All news media were already full of the Armageddon from China that was being unleashed in European countries, spreading to Africa to cause even more chaos on our poor health care system. We needed a saviour!
The west was our saviour, waiting to advice us on how to protect ourselves from this very deadly pandemic. (Are we this gullible?)
Many people got scared..no...got petrified. Including health care workers. They became known as front line workers who were on a suicide mission to save humanity by tending to Covid positive patients... highly infectious and dying patients.
Can you imagine we joined the world in organising ourselves to clap for health care workers even as we denied them protective clothing in their fight against the "deadly" virus?
Sceptics like me and others were vilified as uncaring souls who were out of touch with science and medicine.."Can't you see the havoc in Italy and Spain?", we were asked.
Common sense and science was thrown out of the window as we scampered to follow western directions on how to flatten the curve to contain the pandemic.
Very eminent persons in the media, political, security and research sectors in Kenya went overboard warning us about how dangerous the pandemic was, despite mounting evidence to the contrary.
I do not know at which point I gave up trying to reason with people on a scare mission against innocent and gullible Kenyans, innocent Kenyans who actually believe that their government means well...
It is why they vote the way they do...they actually believe what they are told..
I now know that this is the scenario replicated in so many other departments...people who believe in doing the right thing to improve society are completely outmuscled and outshouted by the system people who do things because they have personal interests, without a care for the public they are supposed to be working for.
Any person with the intelligence of a class 4 drop out (not to be insulting to any class 4 dropouts reading this) will tell you that there is no way that our Covid 19 patient zero was the young "brave" girl who volunteered herself for testing, 2 days after WHO declared the disease a pandemic....ie it was not because of our efficient screening system, but entirely by chance, that we confirmed our first case.
We should be ashamed of this fact, but we celebrated it..! Kenya records first Covid Case..our headlines screamed...
For a volunteer case!
Then we embarked on a ridiculous and futile exercise called lockdowns, curfews, contact tracing, targeted testing, quarantine, hospitalisation, more testing, announcements, scaremongering and even more testings ...to flatten the curve...a non existent curve entirely based on available funds.
Let me educate you...to have an effective containment strategy, we needed a vibrant disease surveillance system to pick out the first cases (not volunteer cases), contact tracing of all positives and isolation of them ALL WITHIN 24hrs of testing to be able to have any chance to contain the spread.
Very effective measures in a country like South Korea or China with a system that can monitor all citizens in its boundaries to a dot. Where the country can isolate but still feed and maintain the upkeep of the isolated persons.
Translating those measures to a developing country like Kenya, with over 3/4 of the population living in informal settlements where social distancing is impossible, and who depend on social interactions for their livelihoods, was a dumb idea...I do not even understand how our health officials considered it, unless they were motivated or intimidated by other factors.
They have their story and maybe one day they will share with us.
By the time the first case was confirmed in Kenya, the virus was so widely spread in the country, but we decided to pretend that the young girl was our patient zero.
Remember, we have had medical and social catastrophes where we have lost human life..avoidable and preventable deaths...and we still do, including road traffic accidents, diarrhoea diseases, pneumonia, Malaria, Floods, Hunger, Cancer etc...
We have never stopped our country because of these avoidable unfortunate situations.
The justification for testing and loudly announcing positive cases from the precincts of Afya House, telling people how many deaths we have had, has become the norm...as the officials pontificate on how well or bad we are flattening our curve. Telling us how to behave normally or abnormally.
Three months down the road, we all now know that this is a very mild but highly infectious disease that we will live with but someone somewhere still thinks that we should stop our country to "contain" it.
Newsflash...this is a community disease or condition...we will live with it whether we like it or not..and it is not killing us. And it will be changing with different seasons, getting milder as it coexists with us...in perpetuity.
If you don't believe that..please understand that it became widespread in Eastleigh, Kibera, Mathare, Kawangware, Prisons, Refugee camps, Old Town and all other populous areas...these cases lost the attention of our testers, or sponsors...but we did not have many unusual deaths reported in those places, even after telling the residents there "stay with your disease"
Instead, we have people with life threatening diseases dying in hospitals or homes and anyone who tests positive is labelled a Covid death...
What are we trying to achieve with these useless testings that don't tell the real Covid positive picture and the exaggerated Covid deaths?
I listen to some of my colleagues trying to justify the continued "containment" measures and I don't know whether to laugh or cry. We act so concerned about the life of the vulnerable in our society and the need to protect them from a Covid death but the same vulnerables are dying in droves due to other causes that we don't care about.
What is so special about a possible Covid death that we put the lives of everyone else at stake to prevent it?
I would understand if we were killing one person to save a thousand lives...the converse is nonsensical.
I do my public hospital ward rounds and come across many patients dying from many other causes who are putting on face masks as they lay there on their death beds, and I want to cry...they believe they are doing the right thing by keeping those masks on because their government and experts has told them to.
I see villagers in their expansive farms toiling at their lands, some with face masks on, believing they are doing the right thing, because we have told them, nay, forced them to.
I see Kenyans who have lost employment.and others who have lost livelihoods as they struggle to obey restrictions meant to contain a pandemic that doesn't have any meaning to them..but they have to obey the law.
I see people supporting the "containment" being people who are public servants or employees with a guaranteed salary...talking at the desperate souls who don't care about this disease but just want to go through the day alive.
I also see many Kenyans who have been scared senseless about this disease that their government has made them fear even more than hunger and it has made them not visit or bury their loved ones with dignity.
I see a government unleashing its might to prevent people (who care less about the disease than about their lives) from holding gatherings to send off their dead in the only way they know how to....while other more privileged people do what they want when they want.
The same government that is loudly telling them not to act normally or the disease will treat them abnormally is telling them not to stigmatize the people with the disease..as it buries the dead at night. What an oxymoron.
Perfectly healthy citizens who test positive are being hospitalised in hospitals meant for the sick, yet we have a health care system that cannot even handle our genuinely sick patients...on whose instructions?
What kind of madness are we engaging in? Has everyone completely lost their minds?
Haloooooo......is anyone listening?
How can a whole nation be hurtling down such a senseless pathways when we have all these "educated" public health advisers and political kingpins who are called upon to give advice on matters of national importance?
Does anyone care anymore?
The more we test, the more positives we will get...and the more we will do nothing sensible after the testing. So, why are we testing? What is the end point?
Is it when we run out of funds, or when we get tired, or when the west asks us to stop, or when we all test positive, or when we get a vaccine, or when we wake up? Haloooooo......!
We laugh at pragmatic leaders who have stood up for their citizens by refusing to copy paste these western solutions and we actually believe the trash that is spewed out against these leaders...
All Kenyans of goodwill, if you care about your country, say no to this false new normal that doesn't improve our lives but rather destroys it.
Coronavirus is a highly infectious but mild infection that should never have made us stop our country and stigmatize people.
Practice good basic hygiene to stop the spread of infectious diseases.
