Page 11 - Gilbert & Me_Neat

Introduction

Sometime during December, 2019, a villager on the outskirts of Wuhan, a large city in the western
provinces of China, collected here assorted vegetables and pig meat from one of many crowded, bustling
street stalls lining the narrow side lane, and headed home. Later that day she will begin preparing the
family meal. Included among the variety of foodstuffs will be Bat Wing soup, a local delicacy in China.

It is a meal she has prepared many time before.

A few days later, first one then two of her relatives began feeling unwell. At first, they had a slight fever
and appeared to sneeze more. Then, their bodies started aching; joints very painful and soon movement
became difficult. Then came the coughing, which got to the point where breathing was very hard, and the
headaches grew worse. Not knowing what to do, the villager took her relatives to the local hospital. Not
an easy thing to do – the hospital was located in the city and required a long trip on a ramshackle bus,
crowded with people heading to work and school.

On arrival at the hospital, the patients were in such a poor state they were immediately placed on oxygen
and taken into the hospitals’ emergency ward. They were squeezed into a space next to a number of other
patients whose ailments and injuries were far more obvious. The mother began feeling sick too, so she
was admitted into a regular ward for observation.

They waited. Their coughing got worse, but nobody knew how to treat these two patients, so they were
admitted and the days drifted by. Their conditions worsened as their bodies screamed out for oxygen, but
were unable to absorb it quickly enough to prevent irreparable damage to vital organs. One by one, those
organs began closing down. The doctors were perturbed; unable to identify and thus treat this mysterious
sickness. First one patient dies, then the second. Quickly followed by the mother who brought then in the
first place.

At the same time, other frightened, sick people start turning up at hospitals with breathing difficulties and
a mysterious disease in other parts of the city. Administrators started contacting each at their hospitals, as
cases increased and no obvious treatment seemed to work. Within weeks, the number of cases had
increased to an alarming level, and deaths doubled. One even described it as an epidemic. Then the deaths
started increasing too. The Chinese stopped all flights out of Wuhan and issues severe travel restrictions.

Finally, the Chinese Government notified the World Health Organization (WHO) that it believed it had
another extremely infectious disease, similar to H1N1, spreading quickly and needed immediate
assistance. By mid January, corona virus has been identified as the culprit, and it was given the name
COVID-19. By the end of January, every Health authority around the world had been alerted to the
existence of this contagion and warned to take whatever action deemed necessary to prevent the spread.

Days later, most countries cancelled all flights out of China, and started bringing their own citizens home.
The rapid global spread of COVID-19 was facilitated by slow, inadequate, ill-considered, politically
motivated and irresponsible actions, which did nothing to prevent the spread of the virus and save lives.

Early in March, 2020, COVID-19 landed in Belize, one of the last places in the Americas to become
affected by the virus. The Government instituted a lockdown first in San Pedro, then Cayo and banned
gatherings of 10 or more persons. As the number of virus cases increased, that lockdown went national.
All schools were closed, a night-time curfew was implemented and all non-essential workers were
ordered to stay home. With flights and cruises around the world cancelled, the country’s major source of
revenue – tourism – was wiped out, so the economy crashed with massive unemployment. The
Government’s joint Oversight Committee descended into chaos and distrust after just three weeks, as
political divides resurfaced. This was the worst disaster to hit Belize since Hurricane Hattie back in 1961.