Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1318996
11 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 13 DECEMBER 2020 OPINION stable numbers for the past few weeks… we have an average of new cases per day of between 120 and 130, and that is how it stayed. The cases have not decreased and are not decreas- ing and that is why the existing measures, which are working, have to be kept in place…." Huh? What? Come again, please? Did the Health Minis- ter really just describe the gov- ernment's measures as – of all things – a 'success'? And if so: on what basis, exactly? Going on Fearne's own com- parison with September's fig- ures – when the average rate of daily new cases stood at between 40 and 50 – today's statistics suggest that as many as three times that number are now getting infected with COVID-19… every single day. And yes, granted: in Septem- ber, we registered a steady in- crease in contagions… unlike today's figures, which seem to have levelled out (though let's face it: this could all change to- morrow… and almost certainly will change, over the Christ- mas period). But… seriously, though: do I even need to continue? Is it even possible that a man of Chris Fearne's intelligence cannot see the glaring flaw in his own argument? Because it's pretty darn visi- ble to me, you know. So here goes: yes, the numbers have levelled out… but they've lev- elled out at an average that is much, MUCH higher than an- ything we were ever used to before. And this means that, even if September's figures tended to increase, from one week to another… they still remained comparatively much lower – and, therefore, infinitely more manageable - than what we are experiencing today. Which brings me to an even more conspicuous fly in the ointment: somewhere along the way, we seem to have also lost sight of the original aim of our entire national COVID-19 strategy… which, as I recall, was to minimise the rate of new cases as much as possible, so as not to overload the health system all at once. Last I looked, 'to minimise' meant to keep numbers as low as possible… and certainly NOT to content ourselves with an average daily case-rate of 130-140 – which is a shocking- ly high figure, by any standard – just because it's 'no longer increasing'. Because ultimately, a certain percentage of our daily COV- ID-19 cases is always going to end up in ITU – which was al- ready reportedly overstretched at the end of September, when we were dealing with around one-third of today's figures – and I need hardly add that, the higher the contagion rate – no matter how 'stable' – the greater the percentage that will need emergency hospital- isation, and… at the end of it all… the higher the daily death toll, too. So to describe the present situation as 'a success' – when both our contagion AND death rates are entirely comparable with the very worst the en- tire world has to offer – sorry, but that's right up there with 'waves are only found in the sea'. And coming from someone who has hitherto always been perceived as a lone voice of reason, in a government that is otherwise in total denial over its own, woeful mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis… it doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence for the future, ei- ther. How on earth did we even allow such a bizarre, unearthly situation to become so… 'normalised'? Since when has the gradual extermination of an entire generation become so commonplace, that we no longer even recognise it for the shocking calamity it truly is?