Mass testing the best strategy to beat virus, not a lockdown

In the last one week, I have isolated myself in a small village in Gatundu, doing one or two things now that it has rained.

It was not easy getting there but somehow I managed to convince those men and women doing a splendid job at police roadblocks that it was important to investigate whether my village-mates are observing the Rules of Corona. They let me through.

They are doing a good job of keeping away suspicious characters who got lost in the big city aeons ago, and who now want to hide in the villages they abandoned, thus making their aged parents vulnerable to this newfangled disease.

And because I regard myself as a law-abiding citizen, I am going to keep my promise and write about what I have been seeing. Most of it is not pretty.

The countryside itself is lush all right, verdant with greenery and heavy with the promise of a bountiful future.

The food crops are healthily sprouting and because illicit alcohol is not as rampant as before, a high number of young hustlers who would be drinking are now busy picking coffee and avocados for a living.

But from what I have seen, if nothing is done, rural areas are going to be the new frontier for the coronavirus, God forbid.

Quite simply, my fellow village-mates and those who visit the market centres for whatever reason are not observing the very basic rules designed to save them from painful death.

Their carefree attitude is appalling, especially as they have heard the message. It is all over the airwaves and there are very few homesteads without a radio set these days.

But when you go to one of those centres, you discover that even where water and soap are provided as per the regulations, people are not washing their hands, let alone sanitising them.

You visit a number of butcheries as I purposely did in four townships and you discover that the majority of meat-sellers do not wear masks, although they have been expressly told to do so.

Any attempt to find out why they are not wearing masks just elicits nasty glares. I remember losing my cool when one chap insisted on cutting up my piece of meat without my say-so.

His explanation that he always did it because it was part of his job was not convincing and I told him to buy a mask and wash his blood-streaked hands first before touching meat. He was not impressed and told me to go back to Nairobi.

But all is not gloom. Things have decidedly improved, although the virus is still being treated like a stranger by villagers.

This is probably because they do not know of any of their acquaintances who died of the disease.

This strange denial has eerie echoes of the HIV/Aids outbreak a few decades ago; until close relatives started contracting it, few had any intention of obeying the strictures meant to save them, and so they merrily went canoodling all over the place.

So it is with the coronavirus. These are, to many, just stories, and so it may not take too long before the grim statistics start hitting home.

There are obvious explanations for such inexplicable nonchalance. First, people are being told to wear masks outdoors, but such vital pieces of prophylactic clothing are not easy to come by, and when available, they don’t come cheap.

They are also being told to sanitise their hands and their surroundings as often as possible, but genuine sanitisers are simply out of reach for many. However, insolence, not ignorance, is the biggest impediment.

What is so difficult about keeping a safe distance from the person you are interacting with?

People are still jostling everywhere for no good reason as though unaware that the coronavirus loves crowds. They are still sharing drinking glasses and cigarettes in “secret” kumi kumi dens.

They are still jumping onto boda-bodas without protection. What is the government supposed to do to make them see sense?

True, it can lock down the whole country as some people who have probably hoarded all the essentials of life are saying.

But the effects of doing so will be devastating for the poor. In any case, such a lockdown may be very difficult to implement in our circumstances because of the cost implications and the fact that feeding millions who have no way of storing food in their houses will be next to impossible.

Others are saying, and rightfully so, that the best strategy is to know the correct figures of those afflicted, which can only be done through mass testing.

They argue that the dribbles of daily briefings do not give the true picture. I agree with them and recommend that the government move with alacrity to test all Kenyans.

The people I quarrel with are those elitist types who are calling Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe names for his briefings, describing them as public relations exercises. What else do they want the man to do — find a cure for Covid-19?