Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1318996
10 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 13 DECEMBER 2020 Raphael Vassallo OPINION Since when are four deaths a day considered 'normal'? HAS anyone else noticed how Robert Abela and Chris Fearne seem to have assumed the twin roles of 'good cop/bad cop', respectively, when it comes to making public declarations about COVID-19? Since around the end of July, it has generally fallen to the Prime Minister to regale us with a series of increasingly bizarre and inane comments – like, for instance, his ill-fated remark that 'waves are to be found in the sea' – all aimed at reassuring the general pub- lic that Malta has somehow brought the pandemic situa- tion 'under control'. As a rule, however, the Prime Minister's upbeat, optimistic (and, quite frankly, delusional) tone is nearly always undercut by his Health Minister's more sober, cautious approach. So where Abela plays the 'good cop' card at every op- portunity – telling people ex- actly what they want to hear, instead of outlining the cold, harsh reality we are all really going through – Chris Fearne is usually the one who bring us all back to earth with a solemn thud: by consistently remind- ing us that… erm… no, actual- ly: waves are not found 'only in the sea'; the danger is not 'be- hind us' … and above all, that now is certainly not the time to lower our guard. That, at any rate, was how it generally played out until last weekend. For instance: as re- cently as November 4, Robert Abela claimed that "with cer- tain restrictions we're manag- ing to live a relatively normal life"… and – just a day after Malta registered four COV- ID-19 deaths: our highest death toll, in a single day, since the crisis began last March – he even added: 'Right now, things are doing well…" Hmm. Almost makes you wonder if our Prime Minis- ter is even living in the same country as the rest of us. Or, alternatively, if the words 'nor- mal' and 'well' actually mean something very different, in the language we now recognize as 'Abela-speak'. I mean, honestly: by what stretch of the imagination can a sudden spike in COVID fatal- ities – not to mention the con- sistent emergence of (at the time) well over 100 new cases, every single day – possibly be described as 'doing well'? And that, of course, was be- fore the situation took a very dramatic turn for the worse. A few days later – on 11 No- vember – COVID-19 claimed seven lives in the space of 24 hours: i.e., almost double our previous record. Meanwhile, just to put those figures into some kind of per- spective: last Wednesday, it was reported that the US death toll had reached an all-time high of 3,250 fatalities in a sin- gle day, out of a population of 330 million people. That works out at around nine deaths per 1 million in- habitants… and the figure was considered so alarming, that it literally made headlines across the entire world. Malta, on the other hand, has a population of around 500,000… which also means that our own record, of seven deaths in a single day, actual- ly works out at 14 deaths per million inhabitants: in other words, around one-and-a-half times higher than that of the USA. Sadly, that was not a one-off, freak occurrence, either. Abe- la might not have noticed this himself… but our fatality rate has since then more or less sta- bilized at approximately three (sometimes four) a day. To stick to the same ratio: that's around six to eight fa- talities per million inhabitants: just marginally lower than the highest-recorded death toll in the United States… which, in case you hadn't already no- ticed, is widely held up as an international model for the 'worst-case scenario', when it comes to a single country's (mis)handling of the crisis. And, just like the corre- sponding statistic of 120-30 daily new cases, this unac- ceptably high death toll has so far shown no signs of slowing down. As things stand, there have only been two days over the past month – 22 November and 1 December – where no deaths were registered at all. I suppose it says something about the sheer gravity of the situation – you know, the same situation Abela himself seems to think is perfectly 'normal' – that the local media reported both those fatality-free days as something completely out of the ordinary. It seems that we have become so inured to a daily death toll of two, three, four, or even higher… that the simple fact that 'nobody died', on any one day in particular, has in itself become 'news'. So again, I ask: how on earth did we even allow such a bi- zarre, unearthly situation to become so… 'normalised'? Since when has the gradual ex- termination of an entire gen- eration become so common- place, that we no longer even recognise it for the shocking calamity it truly is? Ah, but this where the ev- er-dependable Chris Fearne usually steps in, to counterbal- ance the Prime Minister's state of denial with a much-needed dose of good old-fashioned re- alism. Only… it didn't quite happen in this case, did it? No: it seems that the Health Minister, too, has been bitten by the same 'good cop' bug we previously only ever associated with Robert Abela. Or at least, that's the impression I got reading the interview he gave to this newspaper last Sunday. For instance: when it was put to him, in no uncertain terms, that "the number of new COV- ID-19 cases has not dropped dramatically" since the intro- duction of emergency regula- tions last month… this was his reply: "The numbers show that the measures we adopted were a success. In September, we were seeing the number of cas- es increasing on a weekly basis, but now we have been seeing