Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1351936
NEWS 18.3.2021 Kevin-James Fenech Kevin is the founder and owner of JOB Search - jobsearch.mt and FENCI Consulting fenci.eu. He is a management consultant and business advisor by profession, focusing on strategy, human resources and recruitment. He has a passion for anything related to business and has written about the topic for over 10 years in most major newspapers or journals I am not going to mince my words due to the grave situa- tion we find ourselves in. What we don't need right now is a '…scientist-led COV- ID advisory board…' First, I would like as a citizen to be able to hold accountable our elected politicians espe- cially the ones forming part of government. erefore, the fi- nal decision of anything relat- ed to governing this country, should always be that of the government of the day. Second, what the UK has shown us, since that is the ex- ample being quoted by those proposing this 'scientist-led COVID advisory board', is that SAGE (the UK's Scientific Ad- visory Group for Emergencies) actually made many mistakes last year, spewed misleading forecasts and fundamentally flawed modelling, performed embarrassing U-turns and in- variably proposed authoritar- ian restrictions which PM Bo- ris Johnson shot down. is is why the democratically elected leader should have final say and any 'advisory group' should only propose advice. ird, it is a bit late in the day to establish an advisory board and even if it had been formed earlier, it would most certainly need economists, finance and business experts to be equal in number to any scientific or medical experts. Y ou simply can't bestow medi- cal or scientific experts power and decision making authority which goes above a democrat- ically elected government. We are not a public health dicta- torship and I see no reason why COVID should make us fall out of love with democracy. I am a management-consult- ant / business advisor by pro- fession and invariably always tap into my experience in the private sector when writing such opinion pieces. No mat- ter the crisis which a company faces, it is aways the appointed CEO that carries ultimate re- sponsibility for decision mak- ing. is is what highly effective decision making organisations do: they empower the leader and hold him/her accountable. You also don't delegate the responsibility of big decisions to some 'advisory board' even if faced with a national public health emergency and equally important you make sure that any advisory board is populat- ed with experts from different and varying areas of expertise so as to ensure a 'balanced ap- proach'. Period. e pandemic doesn't just bring with it public health im- pacts but also socio-economic impacts. Furthermore, the pandemic and the public health restric- tions have had a huge psycho- logical impact on children, the elderly, the vulnerable and even the workers who live with the fear of losing their job. We therefore need to balance everyones' interests in order to have balanced decisions other- wise if you let the scientists or doctors run / control this pub- lic health emergency you might end up with zero virus infec- tions but a lot of pain, hardship and economic calamities. is is why a 'balanced approach' is the superior approach. We can never let the solution be worse than the problem itself. Moreover, we are now seeing the light at the end of tunnel (light = vaccine) and have an aggressive vaccination pro- gramme in place which will hopefully allow us to return to some kind of normality come May or June. My point is that the only number that counts right now, is the number of people be- ing inoculated with any of the EMA's approved vaccines. Even though some EU countries are going out of the EMA's con- trolled domain and procuring non-EMA-approved vaccines and this to accelerate the road to herd immunity. What therefore we should all be focusing on is how/ when will the EU secure suf- ficient quantities of the vac- cine and when will the much needed 'Digital Green Pass' be launched so that EU citi- zens claim back their right to freedom of movement. ese are the real issues especially for an island such ours which is not physically connected to mainland Europe and heavi- ly dependent on tourism. We should be asking ourselves do we have sufficient quantities of the vaccine(s) with the capacity to inoculate 5,000+ people per day and when do we need to hit herd immunity? With this in mind I humbly ask all the key stakeholders involved in this matter, to fo- cus on the real and important issues: vaccine supplies, inoc- ulation rates and freedom of movement. My understanding is that the EU Commission will propose a package of measures on the 25 March to EU leaders bearing in mind that in January the same EU leaders had already agreed on what a vaccine certificate will look like meaning it is now more a question of approving the implementation of the Eu- ropean Green Pass across the Union which will allow Eu- ropeans to go on holiday this coming summer. Malta desperately needs freedom of movement to be restored within the Schengen Area well before summer starts and therefore the EU's green pass is essential to our econom- ic recovery. In the meantime, we need to continue with the aggressive vaccination roll out so come May/June we are ready to safely welcome tourists. Let's remain focused on the mission at hand and not allow ourselves to get distracted. What we don't need right now