It's only too easy to blame the Muhyiddin government, as well as Khairy Jamaluddin and Tan Sri Dr. Noor Hisham in hindsight, over how they handled responses to the COVID-19 pandemic during its worst periods in 2020 and 2021 but I often wonder that if the Pakatan Harapan government had not collapsed on 24 February 2020, how it would have dealt with the pandemic in the absence of any suitable vaccines and/or anti-virals at the time.
The Pakatan Harapan government collapsed just over three weeks before the Muhyiddin government which replaced it declared the first MCO on 18 March 2020, seven days after the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on 11 March 2020 and the only available measures such as social distancing, the wearing of masks outside the home, the taking of temperature before entering premises such as shops, registering one's entry either by scanning a QR code with the MySejahtera app or writting one's personal contact details down in a log book, the use of hand sanitiser, the closure of offices and non-essential businesses and so forth to try to contain the spread of COVID-19 which not only placing a burden on Malaysia's intensive care facilities but which was already costing the lives, especially of people.
Making mistakes and mis-judgements is understandable during that peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, when not quite sure what to do.
There were were two major upsurges in the number of daily new COVID-19 cases in 2020 and 2021. The first was from around 19 June to 23 October 2021 and the other bigger spike from around 29 January to 16 April 2022.
I received my first and second doses of the Sinovac vaccine in the hall of the Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) in Bandar Sungai Long. It looked exactly like the mega vaccination centre in that CNA You Tube video and the vaccines were administered by staff of the Sungai Long Specialist Hospital adjacent to the hall.
I refused to accept the free Pfizer booster offered by the government through the MySejahtera app and paid RM99 for a Sinovac booster by a private medical clinic in Petaling Jaya and a number of people I know, including some of my neighbours did the same and paid for a Sinovac booster.
Whist there are reports about people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 still being infected by it, however the number of daily new deaths from COVID-19 have been dramatically reduced, due to the immunity generated by the vaccination, better methods of treatment of COVID-19 cases, better anti-virals, as well as albeit more virulent but much less fatal mutations of the SARS-COV-2 virus.
According to Worldometers, Malaysia's highest number of daily new deaths was 592 on 11 September 2021, and there was only 259 new cases and 1 (one) new death yesterday (11 February 2023).
Altogether, Malaysia is ranked 28th worldwide, with a total of 5,039,326 COVID-19 cases and a total of 36,951 deaths for COVID-19 so far, or 151,874 cases per million population and 1,114 deaths per million population, which is not good but still much better than many more developed countries, such as the United States, with 104,764,296 total cases, 1,140,015 total deaths, 312,911 cases per million population and 3,405 deaths per million population, and which reported 3,851 new cases and 36 new deaths yesterday (11 February 2023).
Whether there was any hanky panky or favouritism towards certain parties on the part of Muhyiddin, Khairy and Dr. Noor Hisham is left for the courts to determine, but when one is fighting a war (and yes, fighting COVID-19 is a war against an unseen enemy) or firefighting an emergency situation such as a fire, it is only too easy to make misjudgements and mistakes.
That brings me back to the question I posed initially - I.E. Had Pakatan Harapan been the federal government during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, how differently would it have dealt with the SARS-Cov-2 virus infection which was killing people in Malaysia, overloading intensive care facilities and so forth, and would it have dealt with the problem more effectively, when it does not seem to know how to contain and reverse the rising trend in prices of essentials such as food right now ?
It's only too easy to blame the Muhyiddin government, as well as Khairy Jamaluddin and Tan Sri Dr. Noor Hisham in hindsight, over how they handled responses to the COVID-19 pandemic during its worst periods in 2020 and 2021 but I often wonder that if the Pakatan Harapan government had not collapsed on 24 February 2020, how it would have dealt with the pandemic in the absence of any suitable vaccines and/or anti-virals at the time.
The Pakatan Harapan government collapsed just over three weeks before the Muhyiddin government which replaced it declared the first MCO on 18 March 2020, seven days after the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on 11 March 2020 and the only available measures such as social distancing, the wearing of masks outside the home, the taking of temperature before entering premises such as shops, registering one's entry either by scanning a QR code with the MySejahtera app or writting one's personal contact details down in a log book, the use of hand sanitiser, the closure of offices and non-essential businesses and so forth to try to contain the spread of COVID-19 which not only placing a burden on Malaysia's intensive care facilities but which was already costing the lives, especially of people.
Making mistakes and mis-judgements is understandable during that peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide, when not quite sure what to do.
There were were two major upsurges in the number of daily new COVID-19 cases in 2020 and 2021. The first was from around 19 June to 23 October 2021 and the other bigger spike from around 29 January to 16 April 2022.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/malaysia/
I received my first and second doses of the Sinovac vaccine in the hall of the Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) in Bandar Sungai Long. It looked exactly like the mega vaccination centre in that CNA You Tube video and the vaccines were administered by staff of the Sungai Long Specialist Hospital adjacent to the hall.
I refused to accept the free Pfizer booster offered by the government through the MySejahtera app and paid RM99 for a Sinovac booster by a private medical clinic in Petaling Jaya and a number of people I know, including some of my neighbours did the same and paid for a Sinovac booster.
Whist there are reports about people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 still being infected by it, however the number of daily new deaths from COVID-19 have been dramatically reduced, due to the immunity generated by the vaccination, better methods of treatment of COVID-19 cases, better anti-virals, as well as albeit more virulent but much less fatal mutations of the SARS-COV-2 virus.
According to Worldometers, Malaysia's highest number of daily new deaths was 592 on 11 September 2021, and there was only 259 new cases and 1 (one) new death yesterday (11 February 2023).
Altogether, Malaysia is ranked 28th worldwide, with a total of 5,039,326 COVID-19 cases and a total of 36,951 deaths for COVID-19 so far, or 151,874 cases per million population and 1,114 deaths per million population, which is not good but still much better than many more developed countries, such as the United States, with 104,764,296 total cases, 1,140,015 total deaths, 312,911 cases per million population and 3,405 deaths per million population, and which reported 3,851 new cases and 36 new deaths yesterday (11 February 2023).
Whether there was any hanky panky or favouritism towards certain parties on the part of Muhyiddin, Khairy and Dr. Noor Hisham is left for the courts to determine, but when one is fighting a war (and yes, fighting COVID-19 is a war against an unseen enemy) or firefighting an emergency situation such as a fire, it is only too easy to make misjudgements and mistakes.
That brings me back to the question I posed initially - I.E. Had Pakatan Harapan been the federal government during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, how differently would it have dealt with the SARS-Cov-2 virus infection which was killing people in Malaysia, overloading intensive care facilities and so forth, and would it have dealt with the problem more effectively, when it does not seem to know how to contain and reverse the rising trend in prices of essentials such as food right now ?