I think the world is getting to a stage where it has to admit it may have to live with COVID 19.
The planet cannot stay locked down forever.
As a short term strategy to save the vulnerable yes, but long term, it goes against the grain of survival itself.
The world has become too digital to stay static for infinite periods of time.
There has to be an exit plan in case lockdown does not flatten the various curves of infections in the respective nations.
Strategies of nations with low mortality, low infectivity and low morbidity that did not necessarily lock down should be studied.
The only place where a lockdown has worked, was in Wuhan China, and we know the totality of its enforcement was extraordinary.
Moreover, China had other vast areas and aspects of its economy operational to withstand the shortfall of a total lockdown in a small perimeter of its territory.
I am not saying open economies immediately.
I am saying at this point, it is time to start thinking up alternative strategies.
Social distancing can still continue.
The elderly can still be told to stay at home.
Graded opening of businesses, from the most important slowly to the less essential.
Case fatality rates can still be carefully studied, and the curve analysed.
Drug trials can still continue.
COVID cases can be shipped to dedicated facilities so that hospitals can be disinfected and made to serve its purpose of attending to other illnesses, some of which have actually claimed more lives.
All this can be deployed to buy time until a vaccine or cure medicine is invented.
Most of the resources used to fight this pandemic were sourced from an open economy.
If the space remains closed long enough, we may have to start dealing with issues that will rank above COVID 19 on our table of existential threats.
Obinna Aligwekwe
Credit: Chi Di
