The unmerry month of May

AS MAY comes to an end, it closes with this country having recorded more than 10,000 covid19 cases in just one month, according to official Ministry of Health statistics.

The alarming number of cases speaks to the serious crisis we are in. It is a dire warning that a return to manageable rates of infection will not occur unless all sectors of society make a serious effort.

At the ministry’s virtual media conference on Wednesday, our reporter Paula Lindo asked whether the officials present thought the State’s public education campaign is working.

The reply of epidemiologist Dr Avery Hinds was telling.

“The only metric that we would have…is the extent to which people are following or understanding or accepting the guidance that is being provided,” Dr Hinds said.

Following, understanding, accepting. These imply that the elements of this issue are: the need for the population to keep track of what is being said; the degree to which they comprehend the guidance; and finally, the extent to which they are willing to actually come to terms with the situation and apply their knowledge to real-world situations.

In Dr Hinds’s view, there have been increasing levels of all these. Things are “trending” in the direction of more adherence and a greater demand for vaccination, he said.

This is, perhaps, a case of seeing the glass half full.

A different tale is told by the sheer numbers that have been reported this month, though much of it is likely linked to the exponential effect of exposure in households and communities over time, as well as the presence of a highly infectious variant from Brazil.

But framing things in terms of following, understanding and accepting alone ignores the issues raised by the State’s communication strategies.

We have in the past been critical of these (as we still are), and many communications experts have also found fault.

However, today, we would like to point to a key issue touched on by Dr Hinds: the issue of acceptance by the population.

The truth is, even if we lived in a perfect world and the Government’s communications strategies were without fault, these strategies would mean little if the people they are directed at are not open to them. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink.

Ours is a diverse population with differing levels of education, yes (which is a problem: how many people really grasp how strict home self-quarantine must be?) – but also with varying approaches to life and to risk. The issue of compliance in households under quarantine alone flags the fact that within a single family unit, different individuals will have wildly differing attitudes which will be borne out in their behaviour.

We can critique the State all we want, but unless we check ourselves, this war will simply rage on.