Coro: A People Living in Denial - Ik Muo, PhD

As far as Coro is concerned, we are living in denial or playing the ostrich and this is a dangerous predisposition. At Mass, on Sunday, 8/11/20, the visiting  Priest told all of us to ‘shake your neighbour; nothing is happening’. The small boy next to me apparently felt bad when I did not shake his hand. The following day, 9/11/20, I was at LASU and even though the ‘no mask no entry’ notice was at the gate, I was the odd-man out in my ‘Lagbaja outfit’ throughout the school. Coro is back with a vengeance (did it even leave before?) but the genuine question in Nigeria is whether the first wave has run its course. On 8/11/20, we had 300 cases, the highest since August, with 255 of them from my Lagos. The figures for the preceding Monday to Friday were 72, 137, 155, 180 and 223. This shows a worrisome trend. But the MOST worrisome issue is that the figures for 8/11/20 came from only 5 states+ FCT.  So, where were the figures for the other 31 states. When we do not conduct the tests or when we fail to release the figures as realised, then, talking of the second wave is an exercise in self-deception.

 However, there are still some weighty Coro news in Nigeria, the weightiest being that Governor Bello of Niger State has been ‘coronised’, making him the 9^th Executive Coro Patient (after the governors of Bauchi, Kaduna,Oyo, Abia, Ondo, Delta,Ebonyi and Ekiti). This came after some speculations as to whether his commissioners were caught in the Coro  web or not. The37 NYSC Orientation Camps containing about 60,000 youths have been thrown open and apart from pre-testing all of them before ‘admission’, the NCDC has declared that the camps would not be closed because of cases of Coro. Sure? A highbrow public school in Lagos has been infested while an unknown tertiary institution has been closed in Oyo state because of Oga-Coro.  Abia State University went into the EndSARS mode when students were asked to pay a PPF(Pandemic Prevention Fee) of N15000 apiece. Luckily, the governor intervened before the thing transmigrated from Protest to Riot. The school, like its other State-owned  counterparts, is ‘mis-funded’ and it is looking for every avenue to garner the much abused IGR! But that is by the way. Lagos State has also threatened to impose a fresh lockdown due to the ‘continuous flagrant disregard of safety guidelines by citizens, which heralds danger’

However, all over the world, the Second Wave is a frightening existential reality. Unfortunately, it is behaving like our typical papaput (I know it is ‘mamaput’ but I don’t want to have any issue with gender activists!), where most often, the ‘extra soup’ is more than the initial serving. This is because in some places, the second wave is more ‘wicked’ than the first wave. Russia and Malaysia reported the highest daily cases since the pandemic started while US now has more than 10m casualties as daily cases rose from 121888 on November 5^th to 132797 on the 6^th, with deaths at 241627. This figure(10m) includes Mark Meadows, Trumps Chief of Staff, David Bossie, (who is leading President  Trump’s push to dispute the results of the 2020 election) and Ben Carson(Housing and Urban Development Secretary). Texas is the first state to hit the 1m figure, being at par with Italy.  The Coro-matter is so serious that Biden has had to assemble a 13-member Coro Advisory Board, headed by David Kessler, a former FDA director. Steve Bannon, a former Trumpian Chief Strategist has also suggested the beheading of Dr Fauci, the head of National Institute if Trump were re-elected. This is obviously because of Fauci’s views on Coro and its poor handling by Trump.

 The Ukrainian President, Zalensky has joined the big league of Coro victims( he escaped miraculously when his wife was coronised in in June) and so is Patriarch Irinej, the 90 year old head of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

Patriarch Irineji

At Cambridge University, a dozen positive cases were dictated while University of Manchester  had to take the extreme  and unorthodox measure of erecting a quarantine fence around students hostels( It apologised to the students though).

In India, 862 teachers and 575 students have been coronised  across 13 districts in Andhra Pradesh State as at 6/11/20.  A wave of end-lockdown protests also swept across London, with 104 protesters arrested as at 5/11/20. The story is however different at Victoria, the former epicenter of Australia, which went through last week without any new cases.

The Manchester Quarantine Model!

On the human angle side, three members of the same family in UK, Gladys Lewis and her two sons, Dean and Darren died in a matter of days due to Coro while in North Dakota, a legislative candidate, David Andahl,  who was coronised  last month has won the election , post posthumously. On the scientific side, the Pfizer Vaccine has scored 90% efficacy at the Level3 testing with a sample of 43,538 participants drawn from 6 countries, though it is now in contention whether the research was funded by the US or Germany. And while countries are pre-ordering vaccines in multiples of their national populations, our dear President is demanding for an impartial distribution of vaccines on the bases of equality and solidarity, as if there is compassion in this dog-eat-dog world. The Cough-Detector, an Artificial Intelligence model,  developed by the MIT team has the capacity to identify 97% of Coro cases, even in asymptomatic people. This is done through a simple forced-cough. It has also been discovered that Coro survivors can suffer from long-term heart-related complications, including inflammation. The Food & Drug Administration has also approved Bamlanivimab ( a product of Eli Lilly) for emergency use, for mild-to-moderate cases for those over 12

 

 So, there is still fire in the mountain and it is too early to join Deitrick Haddon’ in singing it is OVER now, because it is NOT over yet. Meanwhile, plans are at an advanced stage to release  the ‘Muoigbo Coro Vocabulary’ but before then, many of us, at times including me  have been misusing and confusing Isolation with Quarantine. They are related but different, Isolation is separating sick people with a contagious disease from those who are not sick while Quarantine is separating and restricting the movement of people who have been exposed to a contagious disease to watch and see if they become sick.

Do not fear; do not be alarmed but ensure that you take the necessary precautions. Coro will return to sender someday but for now, it is still around.

- Ik Muo, PhD. Department of Business administration, OOU, Ago-Iwoye