142092
06-Aug-2021

Covid records have just kept tumbling in Malaysia this week, in all the worst ways.

On Tuesday 3, for the first time, we breached the 200k mark for active cases.

It had been mooted that Sarawak would be moving to Phase Three of the National Recovery Plan on Wednesday. Why on EARTH would we be doing that, we wondered... And sure enough, reason prevailed, and it was announced on Tuesday that we'd be staying in Phase Two. Any move to Phase Three would be contingent on the elaboration of new SOPs; furthermore, the southern part of the state (including Kuching) would not be moving anywhere until its daily numbers showed "a more satisfactory downward trend".

On Wednesday 4 Malaysia recorded the highest number of new cases ever (19,819), and the highest daily number of deaths (257), plus the highest number of active cases and the highest number of patients in ICU.

Of course, Malaysia is not alone. This week the world tally of covid cases went beyond 200 million: "It took over a year for COVID-19 cases to hit 100 million mark, while the next 100 million were reported in just over six months, according to the analysis. The pandemic has left close to 4.4 million people dead."

But we weren't finished. As if we'd not been appalled enough by the figures on Wednesday, Thursday 5 saw another new record, with a total of 20,596 new cases in Malaysia (759 of them in Sarawak). Our total deaths now stand at over 10,000...

graph
The moving seven-day average of daily cases per 100,000 up until 5 August. Inexorably upwards...

Frankly, I don't really understand what's going on. We're vaccinating like crazy, but we just can't seem to get ahead of the game...

dawn
Another dawn...

sunset
Another sunset... But no respite

I'm going to tell you a sad but exemplary story. It's been on my mind since Wednesday, when it happened.

We'd been on one of our early-morning walks, and had paused, as we do, just down from the Mazu shrine. Normally there's no-one there. But that morning, someone rocked up on his motorbike. He told us he was a fisherman, waiting for his boss to arrive to put out to sea for the day; he told us he was a Dayak, and a Catholic; he wanted to know where we were from. He was keen to talk, and in normal times he would have been an interesting person to chat to.

We were outside, and he was a couple of metres away. But he wasn't wearing a mask. And he was talking quite loudly. It was one of the airless days we're getting at the moment. Not only was there no breeze, but the atmosphere felt as though a hot, wet blanket was being pressed upon the city.

Meanwhile, we're only semi-vaccinated (our second jab is scheduled for this Monday). Case numbers in Kuching are the worst they've ever been, and we know, of course, that the recorded number is only the tip of the unseen iceberg. We have Delta roaming round. It takes only 15 seconds to be passed on.

So I was backing away. I was polite, but clearly signalled that I was bidding farewell. He obviously wanted to keep on talking; he must have seen that I didn't, but he didn't seem to know why.

As we moved off, he said, "You don't need to be afraid. I'm not a bad person."

"No," I said, "What we're afraid of is covid." But I didn't want to linger to have that conversation either.

That awful, disrupted exchange has haunted me since.

But I'm scared at the moment, I admit to you freely. I'm not totally sure what happens to covid-positive people in Sarawak these days. But I think the days of twin rooms near the Aquatic Centre are long gone... I've seen scary pictures from the mainland of huge quarantine centres. Enormous rooms full of rows of beds. No privacy whatsoever. No control over anything. Anything...

The prospect of ending up somewhere like that terrifies me. It spooks me more than the prospect of getting the disease, much as I don't want that either.

So at the moment, I'm not taking any risks that I think I can reasonably avoid. Even at the cost of being unfriendly or impolite.

I'm sorry it's come to this. I truly am. This thing is eating away at our humanity. And I wish, I really, really wish, that things would take a turn for the better.

flowers1
At least there are always flowers

flowers2

loupork
At least there's always food. These were really delicious lou pork noodles delivered from the Little Hainan Cafe. Small pleasures mean an inordinate amount at the moment