In search of leadership and imagination

Panama, like most of the world, is facing a unique challenge with the coronavirus pandemic. Like other countries, it has had is share of false promises and obfuscation plus the additional burden of corruption in many projects linked to aiding the victims of the virus or keeping front line medical staff equipped with PPEs and medicines. Rosario Turner, the former Health Minister was ousted without explanation while her erstwhile deputy who stepped into the role is strong on promises of action ”soon” and  “analyzing”. President Cortizo has yet to implement his promise to show the door to anyone linked to corruption, although he is surrounded by suspects. Meanwhile, the chief analyzer renamed his advisory team which seems incapable of thinking outside the box while its leader rushes from one scattered emergency center to another.

La Prensa columnist  Rolando Noriega has surveyed the chaos and formulated some doable actions. This is what he wrote on Thursday before the latest COVID casualty report was revealed:

There are multiple tests for a vaccine against Covid -19. There is one from the University of Oxford, a few from China, a couple more from the United States, among the main ones. If it was announced on  November 15 that there is already a vaccine, that works against this disease, the stock markets would surely rise and there would be celebrations all over the planet.

The truth is that if there is a western vaccine, doctors and nurses, police and firefighters, soldiers, and politicians from the countries of Europe and North America would be vaccinated first, then generalize it to their populations. It will take months before a significant amount of vaccines arrives in Panama. Perhaps May or June 2021. That does not mean that once the plane arrives at Tocumen International Airport, with the precious load of vaccines, the pandemic is Panama ended. It will take several months to vaccinate the adequate number of Panamanians to have herd immunity. That day the pandemic in Panama will end.

In the next few hours, we will reach the terrible number of a thousand deceased and 50 thousand infected. If the contagion rate of more or less a thousand new cases per day is maintained, on September 6 we would have another 50 thousand cases and unfortunately, another thousand deaths. At that rate, on October 26, another thousand died from the pandemic and 50 thousand more infected. By December 16 we would have a cumulative of 4,000 dead and 200,000 infected. We would end the year on December 31 with 300 more dead.

If the number of infected people reaches an average of 2,000 a day, let’s say that starting on September 6, we will have 100,000 more infected by October 26, accompanied by 2,000 deaths. By December 16 there would be another 2,000 casualties along with another 100,000 infected and by the end of the year 600 more Panamanians will have left this land.

In this scenario, we will have had 6,600 deaths in 2020 and more than 300,000 infected. Recall that vaccination would not begin until 120 days later, that is, another 240,000 infected and 4,800 Panamanians lost in the pandemic.

Weariness and questions.
Whatever the setting, we live weary. We are tired. They took Rosario Turner out and never explained why. They hired a modular hospital that is half a stick and the doctors, nurses, assistants and other collaborators who are killing themselves to attend crowded hospitals, do not have equipment, supplies and lack rest. I think we are also leaving them hopeless. The police have already thrown in the towel. Each “linked” somebody has a safe-conduct, this includes even fugitives from justice outside the country. While some toast on the paradisiacal beaches of the Pacific and others wake up with the morning caress of the wind from El Valle de Antón, the rest, we stay in the city complying with the rules, keeping our distance, missing our family and loved ones.

They tell me that there is no climate to do a total quarantine. That people would not stay home because they already know that vouchers and bags of food will not arrive; that they no longer take the medicines to the home and that if they go out hungry, a fine, a broom, cheeks and more frustration await them. Citizens are fighting alone, as the government seems to have surrendered without summoning all its women and all its men. This is gained or lost in the Panama metropolitan area.

Reserve army
There is an entire reserve army that has not been summoned to this fight. Tens of thousands of teachers and professors in the official education system are available to go door to door, visit the sick, trace contacts and monitor communities. This could be done by educators under the age of 45, while those over that age could operate the call centers to touch base with each positive, with each family member or stranger who needs that daily call, which does not come from the Ministry of Health. A thousand educators making phone calls can reach 50 thousand people every day. They would warn if that citizen feels bad, lacks food or medicine. We are very cynical about what our educators can do, I think they are capable of great acts of nobility.

Civic clubs and churches have a very important role to play. Surely “soapy” will help raise awareness among children to help them fight the pandemic at home. However, the most critical role that civic clubs can play is to ensure that the distribution of food bags and vouchers is equitable and that the purchases that are currently being made are carried out with transparency. Civic clubs could form a guarantor board that would oversee each contract. Likewise, churches have their formal and informal networks that know communities, know who can help and who needs it. Their organizations know how to reach all communities.

We are in an improvisation race, the hospitals are already saturated, the hotels have not been paid and now we are going to the convention centers to turn them into makeshift hospitals. We need a larger, more efficient and better-managed solution. We need a ship, not just any ship, but a super passenger cruise ship to use as a floating hospital hotel. Off the coast of Florida, there are dozens of dreamboats, anchored without use. Bringing one of these empty cruises back to Panama and anchoring it on the Amador Causeway would take a couple of weeks.

We would have 2,500 rooms available overnight for positives. By concentrating these people in one place, medical personnel can be rested and the process more efficient. The 7,500 meals a day could be hired from the restaurants on the Amador Causeway, the Old Town, the hotels on Avenida Peru, the restaurants in San Francisco and many other places. The local economy would be put to work, better controlling the pandemic, and we would truly use our maritime vocation.

There are three countries in Latin America that defeated the pandemic. None  had the vaccine, but each in their own way confronted it, organizing its population and aligning the human resources that existed.

If Cuba, Uruguay and Paraguay could, Panama could also. We only lack the leadership and the imagination to eat the world and avoid thousands of dead and hundreds of thousands of infected.