LETTER | Don't ignore common sense in Covid-19 battle

LETTER | Viruses are clever, humans are stupid, accepting this fact will allow us to comprehend better why we are still losing the battle against Covid-19.

Ever since the reopening of school in March, we have witnessed multiple schools with Covid-19 positive cases. Some classes and schools have to close down, hundreds of students and teachers have to undergo scary and not so comfortable swab tests to rule out infection.

Yes, the majority of children infected with Covid-19 are asymptomatic. Yes, the majority of Covid-19 positive cases that occurred among students or teachers were caused by infection at home or in the community, not at schools. 

The mortality rate for children infected with Covid-19 is extremely low. I can give another 10 reasons why it is ok and safe to reopen schools, a decision made by our Education Ministry not long ago.

Knowing the facts and statistics as well as being a doctor practising medicine for more than 20 years, I still think that the decision to reopen all schools is rather stupid. Why? My answer is simple, our Education Ministry and Health Ministry are blindfolded by science and facts and have lost their common sense. I am not against reopening schools, what I am against is to reopen all schools regardless of whether the schools are in green or red zones.

Our Health Ministry is fond of talking about R0 or infectivitiy, and I believe the decision to reopen primary schools in March and the rest in April is partly due to the fact that our R0 was lower when the Education Ministry made the decision. But what they failed to look into is, apart from infectivity, we also have probability.

So, here are my questions to the two ministries:- 

1. What is the probability of having a positive Covid-19 case in school in a red zone and green zone?
2. Are they equal? I believe you don’t need Einstein to tell you the answer.

In red zones, literally, it means Covid-19 viruses are floating in the community, so the chance of positive cases spilling over to schools is definitely higher than the probability in green zone schools. How much higher largely depends on how many positive cases there are daily. This is why most of the positive cases in schools happened in Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Johor and Penang.

Believing in science is ok but when your common sense tells you otherwise, you need to pause and start questioning science. We are in an uncharted sea in this battle, although we can rely on science, we mustn’t forget our common sense. It is ok to follow GPS but when we see a waterfall in front yet the GPS advises us to go forward, we should trust our common sense and not GPS or science.

We are sending our children into the battlefield without giving them any armours or weapons. Why the hurry? Why can’t we wait until all teachers and the majority of adults are vaccinated, and we are able to protect them before we expose them to this hostile virus? 

Our frontlines are exhausted fighting this cunning virus and if we can’t help them, at least don’t make their lives difficult by creating more clusters, more contacts for screening, more work for them.

With more and more schools down with Covid-19 cases, I sincerely hope the Education Ministry can consider closing all schools in red zones and provide a safer study environment for our children, go back to online teaching until the cases are lower or negligible.

My years of practice in medicine had taught me one important thing, we are not treating numbers or statistics, we are treating human, we cherish lives

Statistics are important in medicine, after all, we are practising evidence-based medicine, but patients are not numbers nor statistics, they are someone's husband, wife, father, mother, son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, boyfriend, girlfriend, fiance. 

Statistics and mortality rate for any particular disease is not important if you, your family members or your loved ones die due to that disease. Don’t wait until Covid-10 kills one of our students because we insist that they must study in school and let them fight the virus with bare hands. 

Stop now because I am seeing a disaster waiting to happen and nobody is doing anything to stop it. 

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.