“The world is all the richer for having (the devil) in it, so long as we keep a foot on his neck”

— William James,

American psychologist and philosopher

Almost exactly two weeks after I had started feeling feverish and achy, I headed to Mayo Hospital to get a repeat Covid PCR test. This is the ‘gold standard’ in both diagnosing a person with Covid-19 as well as declaring them free of the infection. I had been feeling fine for a while now and was reasonably sure I had nothing to worry about, but the effects of Covid-19 infection are as much psychological as physical. Since the beginning of the pandemic, with horror stories about deaths and severe illness circulating endlessly on the media and on social media, at times, being diagnosed with Covid feels like a death sentence. It has gotten better now, more than a year into the illness; initially, people with Covid-19 were being treated like lepers of old: shunned by even their own families for fear of contracting the illness.

The fear surrounding Covid-19 has been worsened by the parallel ‘info-demic’ which has accompanied it. The word - a combination of ‘information’ and ‘epidemic’ – was first used around 2003 in relation to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic. It refers to the tendency for information (both accurate and inaccurate) to spread instantaneously around the globe via modern means of communication. In the last 20 or so years, this trend has only accelerated and, with Covid-19, we have seen an explosion of both misinformation and ‘dis’-information about the illness which has made our jobs as healthcare workers that much harder.

I saw this firsthand during the Covid ‘first wave’ in Lahore when my mother and her older sister, both housebound due to Covid, started forwarding various folk remedies purporting to treat the illness. Since they are both high powered professionals with large social networks and high visibility, their message forwards and Facebook posts began circulating quickly to a large audience. I have learned, over time, to handle my mother gingerly. She does not suffer fools gladly and it is impossible to tell on any given day what she will choose to care passionately about. Her life’s work has been women’s emancipation in Pakistan and, as a media professional for the last 45+ years, she has done much for the women of Pakistan, both as a professional and a role model.

Her older sister, an eminent artist, is also a global figure with students and acolytes in the art world all over the world. Neither one of these formidable ladies appear to have any intention of slowing down as they approach their 80s, a testament, perhaps to their own mother: the one and only Alys Faiz, the woman behind Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

So, I held my peace as my mother held forth on all manner of folk remedies about Covid-19 which she had received from so-and-so who swore by it. But when a writer friend of mine messaged me to say that my mother’s Facebook posts and messages were being quoted as evidence by people on social media, I finally put my foot down. I sat her down, explained to her why it was dangerous for her to be sharing unproven treatments for Covid-19 and why this task needed to be left to healthcare professionals. It took some doing but she finally relented.

But, of course, there is no way to counter every rumor and comment on Facebook, Twitter and what not. While technology has given us marvellous tools to stay in touch and connect across the globe, in the wrong hands, these same tools can become dangerous weapons; and the fight against Covid-19 is a global one which requires coordination across borders and regions.

The still fragmented nature of our world is being brought home to us in sharp relief as rich nations in the West hoard enough vaccines to inoculate their entire populations many times over while poor countries in Asia and Africa struggle to even start vaccinating. Scientists across the globe have been sounding the alarm since the day the pandemic started. If everyone on the planet is not vaccinated, no one will be safe and the more the virus spreads, the more the chances of dozens or hundreds of mutant virus ‘variants’ emerging which may make the existing vaccines less effective or completely useless.

And this does not even take into account the struggle between battling Covid-19 as a public health menace which requires a ‘social’, public health approach as opposed to just another illness which represents yet more opportunities for people to profit from other people’s miseries.

My family’s brush with Covid-19 brought this aspect of the illness into sharp relief: even though all of us suffered only mild symptoms and recovered quickly, we saw firsthand how quickly medical expenses can mount, and how this can pose a terrible burden on families.

Our Covid-19 experience also showed us how, despite all its shortcomings, Pakistan’s public hospital system (such as it is) is the best hope for combatting large scale illnesses like Covid without bankrupting people. Hospitals like Mayo and all the other public hospitals in Pakistan, are, literally, the last line of defence for most people in Pakistan facing severe or life-threatening illness. Successive governments in Pakistan have starved them of funds and made sure, using fancy names like ‘public-private partnerships’ of siphoning off their resources to grow the private sector.

But, Covid-19 has shown how inadequate private hospitals and clinics are when faced with a healthcare crisis which affects large segments of our population. The only answer is to strengthen our public health care system including large public hospitals like Mayo Hospital so they can deliver better when the next healthcare crisis hits (which it will, probably sooner rather than later).

My family and I also saw firsthand the heroism and sacrifice of the healthcare personnel who man hospitals like Mayo. Even though I work and teach there, experiencing the system as a patient is the best way to appreciate both its shortcomings and its strengths.

And at the risk of sounding self–serving, it has always been the selflessness and untiring hard work of the doctors and nurses of Mayo and other public hospitals and clinics, often against impossible odds, which has made the difference between life and death for thousands of patients and their families, year in and year out.

Since February 2020, I would be hard pressed to name a single healthcare worker in Mayo Hospital, from peons working the most menial jobs to the most senior professors and administrators, who have not contracted Covid-19. Dozens and dozens of doctors, nurses and healthcare workers have died of the illness and many of their family members have suffered along with them. But, none of us has backed away. Because, this is what we do and this is who we are.

So, get your vaccine when you can, wear your masks, wash your hands and, if you know a doctor or healthcare worker, send them a ‘smiley’ and let them know they are in your thoughts.

Concluded.

The writer is a psychiatrist, author of Love and Revolution: Faiz Ahmed Faiz and a Trustee of the Faiz Foundation Trust.

He can be reached at   ahashmi39@gmail.com and tweets @Ali_Madeeha