COMMENT | Here’s how not to mess up the new MCO

COMMENT | Sometimes one wonders who is at breaking point? Is it really the healthcare services? Or is it the leader of the healthcare services who is short of ideas to stem the rises in Covid-19 numbers? Or is it the leader of the nation who is struggling to keep the governing coalition together?

We have now experienced two MCOs. The MCO 1.0 to tackle the second wave was successful. The second, a CMCO, was a total failure because the trajectory of the pandemic curve failed to plateau and instead reported the highest numbers ever experienced. Yesterday’s announcement was reality MCO 3.0 and not MCO 2.0.

One often relates to increasing numbers post-acronym as a progression, an advancement as in IR4.0. Unfortunately, MCO 3.0 connotes the contrary. It reflects the third failure of government and the Health Ministry in taming the raging coronavirus.

To the former, it is not too farfetched to suggest that it is in reality a PMCO, aka ‘Political MCO’. Whilst to the latter it is really a classical display of Einstein’s words of wisdom, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

It is rather disappointing that the government did not have the courtesy to consult 46 of our esteemed medical colleagues, who signed the ‘Open letter to the PM’, to pick their brains as to how best to move forward.

Okay, rhetoric aside, let us roll up our sleeves, huddle together and get down to the business of saving our beloved nation.

Since the government has now plunged the nation into MCO 3.0, it is now responsible for protecting the ‘S’ bit of the holistic programme of mitigating the Covid-19 pandemic - FTTIS, Find-Test-Trace-Isolate-Support.

That is, to ‘support’ the rakyat and nation...