Why can’t we get over COVID-19?

We were whistling merrily in the last months and weeks of 2020. Cases were dropping to lowest levels since it started to rise in April and peaked in June and we were expecting a bright new year ahead of us, hopefully one which has a sense of normalcy. Deaths curved lower, too, to single-digit levels. To many, 2021 looked bright, not only for Cebu, but all over the country. Then the new wave struck unannounced. And everybody was scrambling to revert back.

If there’s anything true about this pandemic, it’s the reality that we can’t really lower our guard, no matter how successful we may have been. Australia and New Zealand had the most stringent of national isolation policies yet got hit time and time again. Europe passed over the curve late last year and then cases went up again, and actually got worse. The US got into a worse situation than what was already a bad one due to the belief that “the virus will just go away.” It didn’t, it’s still there, and will continue to wreak havoc whenever we lose our guard.

India had a better curve, too, and was ahead in reopening their economy. It’s on the brink of a healthcare system collapse now. Japan managed to control it but suddenly had to declare lockdowns in the Tokyo and Kyoto areas last week. Everywhere, whenever countries and cities relax, the virus comes back, with a passion. And it seems there’s only one cause – reopening too early.

It will really do us well to re-analyze the concept of geometric or exponential growth. A simple high school geometry example shows this very clearly – “You start with a single amoeba placed in a swimming pool, and it divides itself and becomes two after an hour, before dividing themselves into two becoming 4 in the next hour. They continue to divide and double in number every hour and fill up half of the swimming pool after exactly one week. Question – how long will it take for the swimming pool to be filled up with amoeba?”

Answer: “In just one hour.” That’s how geometric progression works. Restrictions, medical and health protocols are intended to slow down the reproduction rate with the intent to contain the spread through contact tracing and further restrictions. Opening up to normalcy is the exact opposite of what the protocols intend to do. Not that we don’t want to, we should! But the rate the restrictions are lifted should never be faster than the containment pressures of the protocols. In any case countries open too fast, cases and deaths come crashing back. With a vengeance!

This is both a country and city concern as it is for individuals. If the authorities miss the mask, we’re back to square 1; when citizens relax and go party as if there’s no more pandemic, we only reverse the advances we made. And both suffer. The government and its citizens, both have to do their part; everybody should, else, all of us fail. You want to get over this pandemic, do your part. Almost 17,000 died already, cases nearing a million. A geometric or exponential progression will never go down unless it is stamped out continuously down to zero.