Corona, Are We Paying A Big Price For Being Dishonest?

By M.M. Janapriya –DECEMBER 7, 2020

Dr. M.M. Janapriya

From my article one on Corona which I wrote in March 2020, I have been trying to burr in to the thick skulls of the authorities the importance of being honest and authentic when briefing the public on the pandemic. Not to be. It looks as if both the health authorities and the government were deluding themselves while either unwittingly or otherwise pulling the wool over the eyes of the public.

First Wave

Take the so called first wave of the pandemic. From the intransigent position of not testing enough of the public randomly, to daily breakdown of the Covid numbers were a bit suspicious. I have touched on this matter in one of my very early articles and begged of them to be more transparent. For example, the news telecast used to say “so many new cases, so many discharged, so many being actively treated at the IDH and hundred sometimes two hundred plus suspected cases”. With confirmatory tests like RT-PCR being available why the last category should have ever existed only god will know.

Navy Camp Disaster

Then the case of the navy camp cluster-disaster. If the authorities knew that the Suduwella drug addicts could be positive for Covid the navy sailors who wrestled with the former should have been quarantined right away without doubt. The task force said they were indeed being quarantined. Where? Looked like they were being quarantined inside the Navy camp itself. If this was indeed the case what a place for the job? No wonder the whole camp got converted to a hotbed of Corona within days. This whole scenario makes me wonder whether those Navy personnel were quarantined at all. 

‘Mee Una’ inside a Corona Camp

A very young navy sailor died inside the camp during this cluster formation. Instead of admitting this as a case of a Covid death the authorities informed the public that the death was due to ‘mee una’ (rat fever) which is a condition caused by a special kind of micro-organism called a spirochaete. The biological name of this organism is Leptospira Icterohaemorrhagiae. Country rats harbour the organism and excrete them in urine which normally contaminates the irrigant water of paddy lands. The spirillum (it is a spring shaped micro-organism) enters the bodies of peasantry through almost insignificant little cuts and scrapes. Thus the typical sufferer is the village peasant and not the urban Navy man. The shameless health buffoons kicked up on their bums to higher positions might say “one can get leptospirosis affecting urban people”. Of course any disease can afflict anybody in theory but a strong and healthy young navy sailor getting mee una inside a rollicking wave of Covid 19 and dying of it is like going to Hunters in Pettah, asking for a pound of butter and indeed finding it! (With apologies to the great medical teacher Dr. N.A.J. Niles FRCS)

Rendezvous of Infected Navy Sailors

From this navy camp it appeared as though sailors were released to go on New Year holiday without completing their mandatory 14 days let alone the ideal 28 day quarantine. (One rule for civilians and another for uniformed personnel by a purpose assembled task force run by the Army?) They travelled long distances crossing many district borders to reach their destinations only to find they had the virus. On route they definitely infected so many. Did the task force manage to catch all of them? Highly unlikely. 

Positives became Negative in 24 Hours

Then came the turn of the DGHS to come on TV with three other doctors to declare RT-PCR negative (quite expectedly) on the previous day’s positive trio from NHSL, Rajagiriya and Kolonnawa in order to maintain the ‘no community spread’ status. Every medical man woman and hermaphrodite involved in this mass hoodwinking campaign must have taken the infamous ‘hypocritic’ oath getting the second syllable wrong and missing out on just a p and a which is quite understandable as they seem utterly and miserably confused, a state of mind that might mitigate the colossus of their bunk. Poor rascals! They do not seem to know what they are doing.

Mother nature’s Kindness

With all the above misgivings of the doctors, servicemen and the administration Mother Nature extended a kind hand to us. The number infected remained low commensurate with the numbers tested. Number dead was a proud low too (for which there could be many reasons) on which President of GOMA, (pardon me for I may have got those letters in the wrong order) most government MPP, Ministers like Mr. New Village-House, Mrs. Cleanare Forrestrule etc. and even some of the gullible public were very pompous. We, I mean the GOMAs (GOMA is cow dung isn’t it?)  and others even laughed on electronic media at the scenes of poor Italians, French, the British and the Americans dying of Covid. We seemed to be rejoicing the somber pictures of slow moving funeral processions and mass graves of those unfortunate nations. 

Complacency & Mother Nature’s Wrath 

Politikkas’ masks fell off their faces. Political funeral processions traversed just not cities but the length and breadth of the country. All-important Parliamentary elections were held, thankfully following preventive health guidelines and full marks to Maco for that. People, both the Rulers and the public seemed to have forgotten that Covid ever existed. All in all we were celebrating too much too early. Mother Nature was not amused. She decided to smack daughter Lanka on the wrist through ‘Bandits’. She didn’t realize giving a measured little smack through an outlaw like the Bandits was going to be hard work and so it turned out.

Administration Panics

Sri Lankan administrators seemingly being advised by Punchi Banda and/or Loku Banda (incidentally Punchi Banda was our, tea boy, road runner to the shops and back, advisor and the store keeper of the emergency medicine of the Consultants Lounge NHSL in 1990-2010 or so) panicked about the economy while advising the nation not to panic about getting Covid! People were counting Covid while the Admin was counting coffers. Treasury seemed devoid of those pleasant jingles. Instead it seemed in the ears of the Rulers to be deafeningly silent despite the frequently spoken Millions of Dollars received as foreign aid to combat Covid on which an austere SL could still have moved on, at slower pace though, for some more time. Remember slow and steady won the race. 

Country was looking for some quick money from, anywhere, somewhere, or from anybody or somebody. Mother Nature sent a poisoned chalice through Bandits. Lo and Behold it poisoned the whole country contrary to the belief of the spineless health jelly fish that it had afflicted the nation in pockets.

New Virus Spreads like Wildfire

It was in this backdrop that Sri Lanka suffered the biggest man-made disaster ever. Infection within the workforce of Brandix and outside in Minuwangoda spread like wildfire and the cluster grew in leaps and bounds. It spread to Peliyagoda fish market from where another rapidly growing cluster sprang up. From the Peliyagoda fish market the virus spread via fish vendors and distributors to far flung areas of the country. Within a few days the total infected in the country rose by thousands. The number of deaths recorded kept multiplying every day. 

Money Talks while Greed Destroys     

It is being alleged that some sixty Sri Lankan workers from Brandix India in Vishakaputnam were brought to Sri Lanka on the 22nd Sept 2020 by a chartered flight to Mattala from where they had been whisked away to an unknown destination without been quarantined. It is also alleged that someone from this group developed Covid-19 and became a super spreader of the virus spreading it very quickly to all parts of the island. I have written about this before so I am not going dive deep in to the matter again. However please click on the link below and read through the whole article carefully including the completion of quarantine certificates issued by the health authorities.                                            

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