Scaremongering will not kick coronavirus out of Kenya

You must have seen the screaming headline this week warning Kenyans to prepare for more than 800,000 Covid-19 deaths.

It came from a scientist working in a respectable health research institution — if Kenyans took it as gospel truth, it is because they believe the research firm can do no wrong.

When President Uhuru Kenyatta drove into Harambee House that fateful afternoon with somersaulted car plates, and announced that Covid-19 had broken into our house, it was the Ministry of Health that was asked to marshal all the resources at their disposal to shield us from getting hit by a disease that previously was just the name of a beer.

Scientific experts, ranging from health researchers to scholars of virology, heeded the president’s call, dusted their coats and put their hands up for duty — because they love this country more than our politicians.

If we were counting on our experts to save us from the doomsday scenario that had been projected by the Ministry of Health, then this week we got convinced that we are more likely to find dialogue in the Jubilee Party than hope in our research scientists who see us are mere numbers to be bandied around.

We are aware that scientists in lab coats are busy people, and Covid-19 hasn’t given them time to interact with the human side of those they seek to save.

We appreciate this selfless act of personal sacrifice to stop Covid-19 from diverting our attention from the real reggae currently playing in the background.

When you communicate with machines who only talk back in colour codes and beeping screens, you are bound to make the assumption that the consumers of your research will also be fellow scientists who spent more than six years in medical school learning how to read wavy lines, and decoding chicken handwriting.

Kenyans appreciate that scientific facts matter, and they are also stubborn. However, when these laboratory results are bound to affect the way people relate to one another, there is need for science to wear a human face.

We might belong to the animal kingdom, but there is a need to communicate science in a way that makes sense to and treats specimens with humanity, because specimen rights are also human rights.

Never before has a mathematical curve been used as the basis to determine how long we would live, and how fast we will die.

When you scare Kenyans that we are bound to fall like flies if we don’t flatten a mathematical curve they only see on television, we wonder why death would come to us in the form of a graph book most of us last saw in high school.

If you wanted to reintroduce lessons on the drawing and interpretation of curves through the back door, you could at least have started with allocating more money to the Ministry of Education for their Adult Education Programme.

Kenyans would want to take their government seriously but their actions point to a contrary view.

This is the same government that has been watching Kenyans being mercilessly evicted in China but instead of sending these threats and intimidation to the Chinese government, they take days to come up with a tasteless statement that neither comforts the afflicted Kenyans nor warns China to get their hands off our citizens.

Just this week, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) announced new measures to save back-broken Kenyans from being threatened by mobile money lenders.

If the CBK can stand with suffering Kenyans against mobile money bullies, State House can also ask our international money lenders to stop waving our ledgers every time we want to warn them not to mess with Kenyans in the diaspora.

There is a need for experts to meet ordinary Kenyans halfway if the war on Covid-19 is to be won.

If scientific experts wanted to intimidate us with scary numbers towards convincing us to change behaviour, they could have hired the Kenya Police to point their batons at our screens during prime time and the results would still be the same.

If you’re going to tell Kenyans that they will die like flies if they don’t stay indoors, because you’re privy to insider scientific information they don’t have, there is a need to tone down the scaremongering, because Kenyans have demonstrated that threats no longer work well to make them toe the line.

Behaviour change has never been achieved through the selling of fear, and waving scarecrows at press conferences.

Kenyans acknowledge the important role scientific experts are playing towards kicking the coronavirus out of Kenya.

However, there is a need for them to compare notes with social experts to assist with health messaging before sending media invites, because no one would want you to lose clients every time you open your mouths to release a report to the public.