- Denial by design
So it has taken the Government of Pakistan, which is so often in denial about the reality on ground, a fair amount of time to officially acknowledge (last week) the first case of Coronavirus in the country. For weeks they had us believe that our land of the pure was so blessed that while our neighboring countries including Afghanistan, India, Iran and Turkey were reporting cases of the virus, we had none!
After weeks of repeated assertions by our top federal cabinet members that no coronavirus case had been reported in Pakistan, we finally got breaking news last Wednesday evening that the first case had surfaced in Karachi. And this just a couple of days after Pakistan sealed its border with Iran to avoid the spread of coronavirus.
And all this happened amid Pakistan expressing solidarity with coronavirus-struck China. Prime Minister Imran Khan also called Chinese President Xi Jinping and offered all possible help, which is great. But what is not great is the fact that we did not evacuate our students stuck in Wuhan (from where the virus emanated) while war-torn countries like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan did. Instead we kept dispatching masks to China, assuming that Pakistan, the great nuclear power, would by some miracle remain coronavirus-free! While India stopped export of masks, we opted to mask the scale of the coronavirus in Pakistan.
Notably and ironically, barely any mention was made by official quarters about the possible risk of the virus being transmitted from China— where it originated. With continuing flow of heavy traffic from China this way, and flights still coming in from Urumqi and thousands of Chinese present throughout Pakistan, there were no alarms bells set off at all! The large presence of Chinese in Gwadar, on the Karakoram Highway, and in the capital territory is no secret, yet all was kept quiet on this front.
Misleading the nation in the name of expediency is never a good idea. History tells us that and if we continue to ignore the coronavirus danger, we shall be repeating it with worse consequences. It is better to be wise than be clever by half in such grave matters
So what was the objective behind this ‘silence’? To take Sino-Pak diplomacy to a new high and create more goodwill for our cash-strapped country! To keep the coronavirus under wraps as this beastly virus must not stand in the way of the Pak-China all-weather friendship! So the entire focus of our far-sighted government and state was on the impending danger of coronavirus being transported into Pakistan from Iran!
The fact is that reportedly the first coronavirus patient was admitted to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad about three weeks ago, if not earlier. According to an inside source, a ward tucked away from the main hospital building had coronavirus patients and some suspected it. The rude awakening came only when a young staff member landed there mask-less, looking for a colleague. Alarmed to see a member of the staff without the protective mask, a colleague there hurriedly asked him to leave as coronavirus patients and suspected cases were kept under observation in that ward.
The government remained tight-lipped about it. Not possible that the federal government’s special assistant on Health was unaware of the cases at PIMS which incidentally happens to be a government hospital. According to a well-connected friend, one coronavirus patient had also fled from the hospital around a week ago.
Apparently one of Sahiwal power plant’s chiefs, who returned from China after a visit last month, also brought back with him the coronavirus. He passed through the airport, drove for a couple of hours with his colleagues and worked for a few days before finding out and deciding to quarantine himself at the plant facility.
It is one thing to stand by friends when the going gets tough for them. but another to mislead your own people for expediency’s sake. Keeping people in the dark about coronavirus in Pakistan is basically keeping them off guard and thus delaying preventive measures. Also it undermines the government’s credibility and creates distrust, raising questions about how much it is hiding.
The first step towards addressing an issue in earnest is to acknowledge its existence. It is self-defeating to be in denial about it. Downplaying the existence and scale of coronavirus spread in Pakistan will serve no purpose. To the contrary it will backfire to government’s own disadvantage. Misleading the nation in the name of expediency is never a good idea. History tells us that and if we continue to ignore the coronavirus danger, we shall be repeating it with worse consequences. It is better to be wise than be clever by half in such grave matters.