Last week, (2021: my prophecies and predictions) I started with the description of the new year as nothing beyond a construct for planning and administrative purposes. Within the week I came across an article by Valentine Obienyen, which ‘supported my motion’, when he described the new year as just ‘a transition without inherent capacity to effect events in themselves. If we have promulgated bad policies for the past 6 months, crossing over to another year will surely NOT put our previous wrongs, right’. Indeed, January 1 in itself (apart from being my birthday) means nothing, except what we make of it .That is by the way.
Now, on the global War Against Coro (WAC). The second wave is on rampage and there are as many strains as there are virologists. Even though we are fighting the same war, governments are taking different steps; vaccination figures are encouraging but with its own controversies while some people have designed some weird solutions. The second came upon us because of disregard for the simple protocols and nothing more. I just came back from my hometown where people did not give a damn about all the anti-Coro protocols. But Lagos is not different. On Sunday,17/1/21, I attended mass for the first time in Lagos this year at our Parish that adopts the anti-Coro NMNE (No-Mask-No-Entry) policy. I observed a disconcerting phenomenon. People would mask-up, gain entry into the church compound and once inside, a good number will convert theirs into jaw-masks while others would remove the masks outright, put it in their pockets, insert it into Bibles or hymnbooks, drop them on their chair or just clutch them in their hands.
When I insisted that they masked-up (I am a church-warden) some obliged but a good number also felt I was being meddlesome. One actually defiantly shouted: I have heard you; and only grudgingly put the damn thing when I stood before him for a while! Our attitude and disbelief is the major cause of the second phase! Of course you are aware that Lagosians have continued clubbing recklessly in a nothing-mega attitude!
The major news this week is the resumption of all schools on 18/1/21, a day, incidentally the PTF warned about 2nd lockdown. That day, I listened to the smooth-talking Sonny Echomo, the PermSec of the Federal Ministry of Education (FME), on Arise News. He clarified that schools had the right to open whenever they were ready and adopt whatever model was best suited for them. He then informed that the President had approved funds for all the Unity(?) Colleges that they would follow up with the Federal Ministry of Finance to release the funds so that the schools would be equipped with necessary anti-Coro and that is after the students have resumed! Actually, not much has happened to the state of our schools between the first closure and now.
Read Also: AXA Mansard health champions new initiatives to curb the spread of COVID-19
There are other issues. The FME announced that schools would resume on 18/1/21 and that the date would be reviewed; PTF announced that schools would open unless FME said otherwise and FME then reaffirmed the opening, restating the same pre-conditions it imposed last year, even when it is obvious that the government had not done anything since October 2020 to improve the preparedness of the schools. The following day however, the Minister said he had reservations about the reopening of schools! Reservations? And he still went ahead with the decision? Even then, the House of Reps opposed the school reopening, suggesting a 3month postponement while ASUU and all the Medical Unions in the country advised against the reopening. In Lagos, civil servants are to resume on 1/2/21 and I ask: are the teachers not civil servants? Amidst all this, Markets, Churches, NYSC camps and private businesses are open while the NIMC super-spreader registration is still on. And while Federal Government informs that the second deadlier wave is on rampage, Oyo State Government says it is still on first wave while Kogi State Governor, the reluctant 2023 presidential candidate, argues that there is no Coro at all. It is also perplexing that while we closed schools in the first time when the Coro tally was 500 daily, we are now opening schools when we average 1500 daily. Meanwhile, as we are reopening schools, Rwanda and Malawi, which have 11000 and 12000 cases, 142 and 300 deaths, are closing theirs! Rwanda has even adopted a modified lockdown for its capital. We need to design how to live with the mean virus, which is not in a hurry to depart because it is a guest that came with its own chair!
Meanwhile, the figures continue to balloon alarmingly as we had1,867 on 15/1/21 (from 23 states only) while Lagos recorded 10436 cases between January 1 and 17th as fake Covid-free certificates being hawked in the streets. About 20% of all recent tests returned positive; there were 70 Coro-related deaths last week, the highest in the last 6 months and our treatment centres are being overwhelmed while our health workers continue to be coronised (15 doctors in Nassarawa Specialist Hospital, 8 at FMC, Asaba and 53 health workers in Edo state). 731 Batch B Corpers are coronised and Lagos College of Medicine hostel was shut over Coro-invasion while heavy-weight deaths continue, including Ndubisi Kanu, Onyeabo Obi, Akin Olugbade, Shaka Momoh and Charles Uzodike, just as more celebrities are being coronised including singer Paul Okoye and Andy Murray. Our total tally for cases as I write is 102,000.
Across the world, it has also been a basket of unsettling developments. The global death tally has passed 2m (2,400,000 cases and 397611 deaths in Trump’s US) and in UK, which has just tightened international entries, a patient is admitted every 30 seconds while France has imposed tighter restrictions and Japan continues with its emergency regime. Meanwhile, China has continued its building magic, constructing up a 1500 bed hospital in 5 days and the Grand Slam has been infiltrated by Oga-Coro as players have been subjected to hard-quarantine, as a chartered flight was Coro-infested.
While Nigeria is still bothering with storage capacity for a meagre 100,000 units, regulatory issues and fake vaccines, other parts of the world are moving on with their vaccination programmes. Biden is promising 100m vaccinations in the first 100 days; India has launched the highest vaccination programme in the world, targeting 300m by July while UK, which has already jabbed 3.5m, (an average of 140 per minute), hopes to jab 15m by February. Globally, 80m doses have been dispensed so far (out of which only 25 are in Less Developed Countries). However, there are worries about post-vaccination deaths (29 in Norway, 55 in US) and others showing serious side effects. Meanwhile new Variants have just been discovered in Ghana and Kenya and the FG has released N10bn for local production of vaccines. The question then is how do we develop vaccines for an amoebic ailment that changes its character every other day?
It has just been ‘discovered’ that Ivermcitin is relevant to the containment of this (curative or preventive?) and true to our character, its price has jumped up by 1000% in the past one week. Meanwhile, I just remembered that Doyin Okupe is a doctor when he hypothesized that Coro spares the poor due to the abundant sunlight they absorb during their hustles, which converts some chemicals in their body to Vitamin D, especially, D3, which boosts immunity and checkmates respiratory diseases. Since then, I have been hanging out in the sun, however unpalatable it is! However, the latest medical breakthrough came from Iwo, where the Oluwo has declared, based on the power bestowed by God on kings, (including those who practice freestyle pugilism) to legislate on his behalf that any coronised person who entered Iwo would be automatically healed. I am already creating a Special Purpose Vehicle to buy up and renovate all hotels in Iwo, preparatory for an unprecedented medical tourism. And then, this one; some superstitious villagers in Japan have constructed a giant guerrilla-like figure, named ‘Giant Straw Scarecrow Gorilla: Proud Gorilla 2020’, to protect the town from Coro. It took them 2 months to ‘design and construct’ this anti-coro effigy, made of steel and straw. The guerrilla was chosen as a symbol of strength and power, to ward off the stubborn and persistent Coro.
Meanwhile, Chinese economy grew by 2.2% in 2020; the only country ( major) that experienced growth last year. How can China, from which Coro emanated be growing while other countries which caught it from them are on all fours? Should this revive the conspiracy theories or should others go to learn from China? This comes as an independent investigation panel holds that China should have acted faster when the virus first broke out.
